


Amazing Grace

by ResplendentRi



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, F/M, Gen, M/M, Mpreg, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, immaculate conception
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2018-05-10 15:38:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5591809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ResplendentRi/pseuds/ResplendentRi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders has never been lucky, nor has he ever felt particularly blessed. Having a dream where a voice tells him that he's been chosen to carry a divine child does nothing to change his mind. But as his body changes, he begins to realize that regardless of his personal viewpoint, there is one thing that this child is destined to change: the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Love all lovely, love divine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edited and Re-posted: 5/5/2018

After Hawke left for the Deep Roads, Anders couldn't help but wonder if he would ever see the stubborn, charming, brave man again. As a Grey Warden, he knew how dangerous the Deep Roads were, how suicidal it was to go down there even with a dedicated expedition. The maps he had provided would only be able to do so much; darkspawn were every bit capable of changing location, and it took only one to sow its slow-killing Corruption within a group. If Hawke made it back from the Deep Roads, would he even remember the Darktown apostate who had provided him with the maps he needed?

Honestly, the small, sensible part of Anders hoped not. The warrior Hawke was the kind of man who drew attention like shit drew flies, and if there was one thing that a possessed, on-the-run Grey Warden apostate didn't need it was attention. Even still, he found himself wishing for Hawke's safety, feeling guilty for not going with him. If anything happened to Hawke while he was using Anders' maps, nothing could convince him that it wasn't in some way his fault for not being there, for not going with him.  
  
But Anders didn't have more than a few days to dwell on those dark thoughts before trouble came to him anyway, Hawke or no Hawke. It came not with the clank of full plate and breaking down his clinic door, but in a dream.  
  
_Dear one, you have suffered so much._ The woman's voice was soothing, almost like the mother whose voice and face Anders had long ago forgotten. When he had been younger, still a hurt and stubborn child with nothing but a small pillow and his memory of the tears on his mother's face as he was dragged away, he had fantasized about finding his home, about finding his mother and killing the man who had locked him in the cellar until the Templars came to take him away.  
  
But as he had grown older and with more and more failed escapes behind him, his fantasies of revenge turned into dreams of freedom, and now the gentle voice filled him with suspicion rather than longing. Demons too could speak with honeyed words and long-forgotten voices, after all.  
  
"Who are you?" he asked. He was almost afraid of the answer he would receive, when he wasn't even sure if he was in the Fade. (On the one hand, it had to be, didn't it? He was asleep, after all. On the other, he may be asleep but Justice, who never tired and who reveled in what sleep Anders got like a caged mabari finally set loose, was conspicuously absent.)  
  
_What matters is who you are, child of magic. Who you are, and who you will become. Your world no longer remembers me. But there will soon come a time when they will need to. They will need a Herald, and you will be there when my child answers the call._  
  
"Oh, Maker."  
  
She laughed.  
  
_I have seen the dark path you are on, my child. It leads only to more war and suffering. But I have also seen that no earthly thing will sway you from this purpose. You still long to make others suffer as you have._  
  
"I long for Justice," he said, and frowned at the double meaning, wondering where was the friend who had long ago promised to guard his rest.  
  
_Justice is not down this path. Vengeance will only burn you both from the inside until there is little else left. You must first embrace Love._ Anders seethed, and wished that he had command over his hands to cast with. That there was anything here for him to fight against.  
  
"What are you going to do to me? How can you just tell me to 'embrace Love,' as if it's that easy to forgive the injustices I and my fellow mages have suffered at the hands of your believers?"  The voice didn't answer him, but he felt an overwhelming surge of sympathy that made his stomach roll.  
  
_There is magic in all life, not just those who can harness its power. In three days time you will be conceived of a child._  
  
Anders could hear his own bark of laughter ring out, as clearly as if he had felt it leave his throat. "A _child_ ?" he repeated incredulously. "That's a bit of a tall order, don't you think? Shouldn't you have chosen _anybody_ who isn't _me_ ? Like- like a virgin, or an actual Andrastian, or - you know, a _woman_ ?"  
  
_It will be the first of many miracles that the child will be destined for,_ the voice replied, as if the miracle would be that a child could grow in the belly of a man, and not a man surviving the carrying of a child. He had seen women die in his clinic before because the life in their belly had implanted outside of the womb, had comforted a few women through the decision to terminate such a misplaced child so that they could survive to return to the living children they already had. Working in Darktown, he had cut living babes from the bellies of dead mothers as often as he had delivered dead babes from living mothers. The tenacity and determination to live of a child was not the true obstacle, it was the weakness of his own flesh.  
  
"Pass," he said bitterly. "I don't have a death wish quite yet."  
  
_You have so much hope and love that you are afraid to give. This child will do you as much good as she will the world,_ the voice promised, and Anders quickly tried to squash the small, sickly feeling that threatened to start unfurling in his chest, refused to give it a name before it took root. It was the same feeling that he'd gotten when Hawke had looked him in the eye, with no lie or agenda, and told him he agreed, mages deserved to be free.  
_In three days, my child._  
  
Anders awoke with a start, blue lyrium-colored light crackling in the air around him and the smell of the Fade skating across his skin. He rolled over, crushed his mother's pillow to his face and took in a deep breath as if he could still smell her touch upon it, or remember what color those eyes were that had sobbed for him when he was taken away.  
  
For the next two days, he buried himself in his clinic and refused to think about the dream. He healed the sick and the injured, for no fee, and gratefully accepted the help of those who volunteered to do the little things that kept the clinic running, like scrubbing linens and washing tables and cots.  
  
And when they called what he did miracles, his thoughts went right back to that voice in his dream, and to the vow that it had made to him.  
  
Afterward, he realized why Justice was so quiet, why he hadn't stepped in or prevented the voice from even reaching Anders at all. Spirits were the Maker's first children, according to the stories. If that really had been who Anders thought it was, it would have been unjust for the spirit to intervene with his Maker's purpose.  
  
Or his stepmother's. Anders still wasn't quite sure.  
  
Either way, Justice's continued silence unnerved him even more than the dream itself. He could still feel the spirit, coiled in every taut muscle of his body, in his vigilance and in every nervous flick his eyes took to the shadows in the corners of his clinic. He felt Justice like an extension of his own body, like a sense that no other human had. But even though he could still feel Justice's presence, he could not tell what his spirit friend was feeling. It was as if he was thinking about something, reevaluating their purpose, mulling over new information. As if he was taking the promise that Anders had been made seriously, which made the possibility that much more terrifying to the mage.  
  
On the third day, Anders' clinic was eerily empty, which did nothing to distract him from the uneasy feeling that nestled in the pit of his stomach more like a coiled pit of vipers than butterflies. _In three days' time you will be conceived of a child_ , the voice had told him, and he feared its words more than he had ever feared any demon, even with the Circle training a healthy fear of blood magic into him.  
  
He had a few silvers from Lirene's donation box, he had meant to wander just to the Hightown market for fresh herbs. The herbs there were of higher potency, and not nearly so price-gouging as the Lowtown markets. He still preferred to pick them himself for the low, low price of no coin at all, but the clinic had just run out of its last potion and when he was in dire need it was faster to buy just enough to last. But he had been so lost in his thoughts that his feet had wandered, even after he'd bought the small bundle of elfroot that he'd come for, and now he found himself staring up at the imposing tower of the Chantry. But he steeled his courage and drew his coat tighter around him (the healer in him thought, second nature, that he was too thin to carry a child healthily, and he promised himself to stop in the Hanged Man for a bowl of stew before he returned to Darktown), and climbed the steps like he was approaching execution, not sanctuary.  
  
Inside the Grand Cathedral he stopped, wondering what he was doing there. His skin crawled and his heart ached and he could feel the Fade begin to crackle under his skin like chillblains, sharp and hot and cold all at once, as clearly as he remembered the brand of Tranquility on Karl's forehead.  
  
_Run,_ he thought desperately. _Fight, Hide, Escape. They're staring, they'll find you, you aren't safe, they'll send you back or worse-_  
  
**_NO_ ** _._ It was true that he'd told Hawke that he could no longer tell where he ended and Justice began, that they couldn't converse in a traditional sense. But in the moments where he teetered on the knife's edge of losing control, his thoughts would boom with purpose and white-hot fury. His thoughts that were not only his, a thunderous voice that threatened to split open his skin that felt too small around his bones, that could easily render his panicked mind asunder.  
  
He felt it then, grief and anger clashing inside him, threatening to rob him of his control. He fought through a white fog more dangerous than tears, throwing himself into the first door that he saw. He collapsed heavily onto the bench inside the claustrophobic, dark room, gasping for breath to fight back the panicked bile in his throat. The smell of incense clung to his senses, spice and citrus stinging his lungs, but he clung to that sense to anchor himself without losing control.  
  
"Know peace, for the Maker's hand is in all things." The lilting brogue startled Anders all over again, just as he had begun to master his rising panic. He clutched his hand to his chest and held his breath, until he realized that the voice had come from the other side of the screened partition. Of course, it hit him, he'd stumbled into a confessional. He sighed, leaning his head back against the wood paneling behind him with a soft 'thunk.'  
  
"Maker's breath," he breathed, and the pampered brogue chuckled lightly.  
  
"Aye, His breath too, I suppose," he said. "You come in distress, my brother, do you wish to unburden your heart?"  
  
Anders looked at the screened partition in surprise, but couldn't make out more than a vague hint of chestnut brown and white.  
  
"Forgive me, Brother," he murmured quietly, then laughed bitterly and veered off-script. "I've, never done this before."  
  
"The Maker understands," the brother said patiently. Anders, however, was at a loss for words, anything that he could say choked off hysterically in his throat.  
  
"...How often do people claim to have been spoken to by Andraste, or the Maker, or- or something divine in their dreams?" he finally managed.  
  
"Often," was the reply, too fast to be a lie. And then, with some amusement, "Though usually not in confession, I grant you."  
  
"Well, I doubt many of them were promised a second visit," Anders muttered. Then he shook his head and picked at a loose thread on his robes. "I was promised that tonight a... well, it would be a miracle, if I wanted it. But either way it's impossible, and I feel foolish for how much I fear this. At this point, I doubt I can even sleep long enough for this promise to come to fruition," he confessed, mincing his words carefully. A pregnant pause hung in the air.  
  
"...I shouldn't have come," he said. Even with how carefully he had avoided exactly what he had been promised, he probably still sounded completely mad. "I don't know what I expected. Sorry I wasted your time."  
  
"Wait," the brother called, and there was uncertainty in his lilting voice for the first time so far. Anders paused, as he was standing to leave the confessional. "I do admit that I am...surprised by your confession, but I have had my own experience with questioning the beliefs that I hold dear. I can only tell you what I believe, but the Maker has a plan for all of us. Few are so lucky as to have their path laid out for them like you say yours was. If what He wanted for you was truly impossible, He would not ask it of you."  
  
"...Thank you," Anders said, even though he felt little better if at all.  
  
"May the Light guide you, my brother."  
  
"You too." Anders slipped out of the confessional and turned and made his escape without looking back to the place where his love had been laid as a trap for him.  
  
By the time he returned to his clinic, there was a crowd of the sick and needy awaiting treatment and when he finally extinguished the lanterns he was well and truly sapped of energy. No sooner had his head hit his mother's pillow than he was dead asleep.  
  
There was no voice in his dream this time, but phantom touches spreading warm pleasure through his body. He felt more than saw the Light, caressing his bare skin and focusing not unpleasantly on his stomach, just below his navel. He shifted and moaned in his sleep, and the pleasure sharpened, hit him like an arrow, too hot, too much. He woke staring at the ceiling of his room in the back of his clinic, spent and sweaty and still tingling all over and oversensitive with sensation. When he felt like he could move his body again, he rested his hand just under his navel, as if he could feel the stirring of new life already under the taut skin.  
  
From that morning on, he tested his first water of the day the same as he had done with plenty of scared girls and women with too many mouths to feed already, desperately seeking confirmation one way or another. Either he was going mad and had dreamed the whole thing, in which case no matter how long he continued testing he would never get any result but negative, or the dream had been real, and there was a life growing inside him that sounded destined for even more trouble and misfortune than he was.  
  
The other thing he did every day, after a few weeks had passed, was wait anxiously for news of Hawke. He knew firsthand how dangerous the Deep Roads were, and every day he realized with more and more concern that their absence was growing nearer and nearer to Too Long, that the chances were becoming slimmer and slimmer that anyone in the expedition was still alive.  
  
It was eight weeks with no more dreams of gentle voices or warm touches, and he was in his clinic testing his morning's water and stirring in the proper ingredients with a thin rod, when the door to the clinic burst open and in strode Hawke, his big grin not at all hidden by his overgrown beard, and his splint mail armor dented and stained with what Anders hoped wasn't his own blood. From what Anders could see of the greatsword on his back, it looked like he'd had to dig his way out of the Deep Roads with it. It made him wonder what exactly had _happened_ on the expedition.  
  
While he stared in shock at the warrior, Hawke's gaze went from him, to the flask still in his hand, then back at him more critically this time.  
  
"Am I not the only one for whom congratulations are in order?" he asked with an amused pout. "And here I thought getting out of the Deep Roads alive was the more unbelievable story."  
  
Anders looked in surprise at the flask in his hand, and the dark blue liquid that shimmered when the contents inside sloshed against the glass.  
  
"You first," he said. He felt proud of himself for sounding steady, despite the hysterical, giddy bubbles in his chest. His hand trembled as he carefully set the flask on his desk. "I doubt you'd believe mine if I told you."


	2. The deep dark before dawn's first light seems eternal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke just wants his friends to get along. Things don't go as he planned.  
> Edited and Re-posted: 5/5/18

Out of penance for storming out of the Chantry upon learning the news of the death of his family, Sebastian had dedicated himself to reading the Chant. He listened to confessions and he read sermons, and he dedicated himself anew to his vows. He was indebted to the man who had hunted down the mercenaries responsible for killing his family and given him peace of mind, and he would likely never forget the charming warrior as long as he would live. Hawke hadn't known who he was, hadn't had any designs of a princely reward, but he had seen a soul in need of peace and he had done what he could to aid him.

That kind of surety and selflessness was a model that Sebastian hoped to follow.

Still, he hadn't seen the warrior since that day, and he wondered what had become of him. It had been several weeks, by the time that Hawke sought him out in the Chantry.  
  
"There you are!" Hawke exclaimed. Sebastian lifted his head from his folded hands with a start, raising himself from where he was kneeling in prayer. Hawke grinned, pure charisma and magnetism glowing from him. His hair was somewhat combed and his armor shone, Sebastian noticed.   
  
"Just got back from a meeting at Viscount's Keep," he said, apparently not missing Sebastian's appraising glance. "Mother wanted to give thanks after the hearing - we're trying to get back the rights to the Amell estate. I mean, we've got a pretty good claim _and_ plenty of coin to back it up, it's really just all that red tape. Anyway!" Hawke boomed. "I thought you would like to get out of the Chantry for some community service today." Sebastian squinted suspiciously.   
  
"Hawke... you know I owe you a great debt, but I have my oaths to the Chantry," he said. He may not keep his finger on the pulse of the Undercity, but he would have to be deaf not to have heard of Hawke's "community service."   
  
"But see, that's the beauty of it," Hawke replied, undeterred. "I'm not asking you to tromp up and down the Wounded Coast with me, just to come with me down to Darktown for a few hours. Oh, and keep a secret. Maybe a big one?" The big man's tone became a little sheepish. Sebastian crossed his arms, shifting his weight to one leg.

"Oh come on!" Hawke exclaimed in frustration. "Look, I have a friend who needs someone trustworthy to help him out; I would - will, gladly! When Mother is done parading me around trying to get us back into Hightown." Sebastian could understand that; he had heard about what happened to Hawke's sister, had heard rumor that aside from a deadbeat uncle, his mother was the only family that Hawke had left. "Varric's been helping out, but he's much better at the, you know, bookkeeping side of help."  
  
"So am I a last resort, then?" Sebastian asked.   
  
"Hardly! In fact, you were the first one I thought of. I thought all good Chantry boys jumped at a chance to help the sick and needy." Sebastian sighed. Hawke did make a compelling point; the charitable works of the Chantry were well-known.   
  
"Alright," he agreed. "Let me go talk to the Grand Cleric. But I may not be able to go anyway. If I'm needed here, I'll have no choice but to stay."   
  
"I'll wait here," Hawke said eagerly, amber eyes sparkling as Sebastian went to speak with Elthina.

"Your Grace?" he called, bowing his head out of respect to her when she turned to face him.

"Sebastian. What can I do for you, my child?" she asked, folding her hands in front of her.

"Serah Hawke has come to me with an opportunity to do charitable works for the people of Kirkwall," Sebastian said. There was a loud clang that rang out through the whole Chantry, as one of the braziers hanging from Andraste's outstretched hand fell to the floor. Hawke, sheepishly, picked it up and stood on his tiptoes to try and hang it back up. His foot knocked over one of the lit candles at the statue's feet, and he had to stomp out the fire to keep it from spreading. Sebastian watched in silence, not daring to look at Grand Cleric Elthina, practically feeling a crack form in the imagined pedestal he'd already put Hawke on.

"He's a character," she said mildly, watching a couple of the sisters shoo the warrior away from the mess he made so they could fix it. "Are you sure these works are truly charitable, Sebastian?"

"I, ah... I have it on his assurance that this is not the same kind of 'charitable' that he did for me," Sebastian said. Elthina thought for a moment.

"Well, you have been cooped up in here for some time," she said. He looked at her in surprise. "Far be it from me to bar you from getting some air. Just please, be careful Sebastian."

"Thank you, Your Grace," he said. "I will."

"And be back before the ninth bell tonight. No good business is ever conducted at night, not even in Hightown." He met her eyes and she smiled at him, something soft and motherly and proud that warmed him from head to toe. "Walk in the Light, Sebastian." He bowed.

"I will," he repeated. And then, feeling a little giddy like a boy being given told his lessons for the day were done, he jogged down the stairs and back over to Hawke.

"What's the word?" Hawke asked.

"She said as long as I get you out of here before you break anything else, I can do as I please," Sebastian teased. Hawke laughed, and looked across the Chantry at where the Grand Cleric was still watching them. To Sebastian's mild surprise, the warrior bowed out of respect when he met Elthina's gaze. She nodded back in acknowledgment, and the warrior and the rogue turned to leave the Chantry.  
  
Walking past the confessionals on their way out of the Chantry reminded him, now that the puzzle of where Hawke was had been answered, of something else that he hadn't been able to stop thinking about over the last few weeks. He hadn't heard anything more about or from the lost soul who had stumbled into his path (quite literally) a few months back. The man who had clearly never confessed before, who had come to unburden himself not of an earthly sin, but of his own fear and uncertainty for the path he claimed the Maker had laid out for him.

For about four months, Sebastian had wondered what the man had heard, or thought he heard, that would have scared him so. He had entertained the notion of trying to find the man only briefly, but other than a warm tenor and Fereldan accent Sebastian had no real clue to the man's identity. Besides, what happened in the confessional was supposed to stay in the confessional.  
  
"So there we were, in some kind of cavern that looked like it was literally made of lyrium. And we'd thought we'd fought our way through all the rock monsters, when just as we were getting ready to go to the doors and try to get out of there, we hear rocks settling behind us." Hawke walked a few steps in front of Sebastian, occasionally turning around and walking backward to better pepper his story with gestures when there was no danger of stairs. He jogged down the steps from Hightown. "So me and Varric turn around and, I shit you not- ...Oh, Maker, I'm starting to sound like him." Hawke chuckled, pausing on a landing to make sure that Sebastian was keeping up.

"Anyway, this wraith was about twenty five, maybe thirty feet tall," he said, starting down another set of darker stairs, past where Sebastian had thought they'd be stopping. "And it is _ugly_. It gave us a run for our money, that's for sure. When we got back to the surface, I had to give my sword to the smithy for a good couple of weeks." It took a minute for Sebastian to realize that they were headed not to Lowtown, like he had expected, but lower into the Undercity.

"I looked _very_ cool when I finished it off. Merrill said it was very heroic. Varric said 'From hell's heart I stab at thee' was not my best one-liner, though. What do you think?"

"I, ah... Hawke, do you know where we're going?" Sebastian asked.

"Of course I do!" Hawke said, turning to look at him. "Why, you don't think we're lost or something, do you? All these tunnels _do_ look the same after a while... Wait, no! I see it!" He ran ahead out of the tunnels. Sebastian, not wanting to be left behind in an unfamiliar part of the city, had no choice but to follow.

In a corner of Darktown that stank somewhat less than the rest, two lanterns blazed over an open set of doors, and from inside Sebastian could hear the sickly crying of a child and hoarse moans of pain. As they approached the door, a blond man with his hair half pulled back into a ponytail came out with an elderly man who leaned heavily on a cane.  
  
"Pack the wound with this poultice tomorrow and re-wrap it," the healer said softly, patiently, handing the man a small pot and a roll of bandages. The man nodded. "And if it gets worse by tomorrow night, then please come back." As the old man limped away, the healer put a hand to the small of his back and arched back with a heavy sigh.   
  
Sebastian's mouth went dry when he saw the way that the simple, pained gesture jutted out an unnatural swell against the thick layers of the man's robes.   
  
"Oh, Hawke," the blond healer said in surprise, now noticing the two men. Keen golden eyes scanned Sebastian head to toe with no small amount of suspicion. Sebastian knew he should say something, introduce himself, but the man's voice had him locked in place as firmly as if he'd decided to give wearing Hawke's impressive full plate a try.   
  
He would know the voice from the confessional anywhere.   
  
"Anders!" Hawke exclaimed cheerfully, holding his arms out like he would embrace the healer if not for the sharp edges of his own armor. If he was aware of the tension between the two men, then he was doing his best to smooth it over. "I brought you an assistant!" Anders - that was apparently the man's name, wasn't it? looked Sebastian over more critically this time. "You remember, I told you about Sebastian, he's the one who was having trouble with that band of mercenaries. I think you were with me when I took care of one of the companies."

"Honestly, Hawke, I've fought so many people with you I couldn't say for certain either," Anders bantered back, shaking his head fondly. He turned to Sebastian and nodded.

"You look like you've never seen a mage before," he quipped, though there was still a hint of suspicion in his eyes. The man's robes were patched and worn thin, much like the rest of him looked. His eyes were ringed with exhaustion, his hair limp from the oppressive air of Darktown, and he had the stubble of a man with too little time in the day to take care of himself. The last thing Sebastian had noticed about him was the staff on his back. At Sebastian's lack of answer, the healer crossed his arms and arched an eyebrow pointedly.  
  
"Ah... No, I've seen mages, just not had much cause to interact." Sebastian finally managed, and knew he was recognized from the way Anders' eyes widened at his voice. "Hello, Anders. Hawke introduced me, but I'm Sebastian." Hawke either didn't notice or plain ignored the awkward recognition between the two men, brushing past them already unbuckling his vambraces.   
  
"Where can we start?" he asked, too cheerfully for the brightly lit interior of the clinic (thought he kept his voice at a respectfully low volume, Sebastian noticed). Anders sized the two men up, and then pointed to bandages stretched out across the clinic to dry.   
  
"Sebastian, those all need rolled," he said. "You can use that basket there. Hawke, can you go out and see if you can find some crates or barrels to break up for firewood, and fetch some cleaner water for that basin there while you're at it?" The warrior nodded solemnly, effortlessly lifting the water basin from the coals. When Hawke left, Sebastian's body caught up with the instructions he was given, and he moved to the aforementioned basket and began collecting the loose bandages in it. He was almost surprised when Anders nodded approvingly and returned immediately to his patients, instead of approaching him about the big pink bronto in the room while Hawke was out.   
  
It turned out that rolling bandages neatly was a tricky task even for Sebastian's archer's fingers, and by the time he had a meager three or four rolled he was so caught up in his task that he failed to notice the sounds of the clinic quieting around him. The mage Anders pulled up a stool next to the one Sebastian had claimed and reached in the basket to pick out another bandage. Sitting drew attention to the slight roundness of Anders' stomach, when his robes were pulled taut against it, at odds with his nearly-gaunt face and thin, dexterous fingers.   
  
"I didn't know my reputation had reached the Chantry," Anders began cautiously.   
  
"It hasn't," Sebastian was quick to reassure him. He had been suspicious of the supposed secret that Hawke wanted him to keep, but the staff that Anders carried was far from subtle. Sebastian had heard about Hawke's sister being taken to the Gallows. He felt honored, almost, that Hawke thought him - a Chantry brother, and therefore in contact with templars regularly - trustworthy enough to bring him to this place. The clinic's location was humble, but Anders' selfless acts had hallowed the space as much as could statues and burning incense.   
  
If he turned Anders in to the Templars, he had realized at some point between when he had arrived and when he had lost track of Anders to the bustle of the busy clinic, Darktown would lose their only source of much-needed medical care. How many lives had been saved here? How many would be saved today, or tomorrow, or next week, who would have died without this mage?   
  
Anders relaxed slightly, next to Sebastian, taking his his comfort as it was intended. Sebastian watched his hands as Anders rolled bandages in silence. Anders glanced at him and their eyes met, and Sebastian realized that he'd stopped rolling his own bandages. He quickly rolled the rest of that one up, and set it with the rest.   
  
"I trust everything turned out for the best, then?" Sebastian asked cautiously, hopefully. As if the man resolving his crisis of faith might ease the uncertainty that Sebastian himself still felt, even with his family's murderers dead. "You haven't been back to the Chantry, I mean-" he shut his mouth quickly, blue eyes watching Anders for a sign of offense. Anders' golden gaze remained on the bandages in his hands, but his nimble fingers slowed and he looked like he was fighting the effort to rest a hand on his middle.   
  
Like a pregnant woman, Sebastian's mind helpfully provided, as if he hadn't made the connection before.   
  
"There wasn't much of a point once the damage was done," Anders said, bitterly and quietly. "If you couldn't tell last time, I don't have fond memories of the Chantry."   
  
Well, his being a mage certainly did explain why he had been panicking to the point of near-sobbing when he had shut himself in the confessional.   
  
"You know," Anders said politely. "It's not nice to stare." His hands had resumed spinning the bandages into neat, practiced rolls, and Sebastian realized at that moment that he had been staring again.   
  
"Was this the trial you were afraid of?" Sebastian asked. Anders tensed, but didn't look up. "Did someone... force this upon you?"   
  
At the time, he would have said that that was the nicer assumption he could have made, that there were enough stories (though few enough with proof) of magic like this, magic that let men carry a child. It was unnatural, unmanly. And of course, the only motives that made it into the stories were cautionary ones, male mages who had seduced important men and used a child to leash their lover to their side... and victims who had a child forced upon them to make them suffer, to humiliate them, or worse. From his impression of Anders so far, he doubted it was the former, and Sebastian assumed that jumping to the latter conclusion would be kinder.   
  
Which was why it took him a second to connect the ringing in his ear and burning heat in his cheek with Anders standing in front of him. The bandages he'd been winding rolled away, unspooling as they went. Anders had frozen with his hand raised, and as Sebastian looked up at him he could have sworn the mage was so furious that lightning flashed in his eyes.   
  
"You were the one who told me I was fortunate!" Anders snapped, like the thunder that rolled after the lightning. "I don't want your pity now!"   
  
"You - what? " Sebastian asked. His hand came up to cradle his face, his glove cool on his burning cheek. "Are you saying this- you think it's the _Maker's_ child?" He was on the verge of a hysterical laugh. "You think that after turning His face from us for so long, He would give His child to- to someone like you?" Sebastian stood to face Anders at equal height.   
  
"What's the matter, _Brother?_ Can't bear the thought of a mage carrying a divine child?" Anders sneered the word like it was an invective he had had hurled at him his whole life. "You know, there are some who believe your precious Andraste was a mage." Sebastian felt the snarl before he realized he was doing it, and he advanced half a step in warning.   
  
"I will not hear such blasphemy!" he yelled.   
  
"Why? Afraid that it's the truth?" Anders asked, squaring his shoulders. The action made his feathered cape fluff up almost like an actual bird.   
  
"Andraste was _murdered_ by mages!"   
  
"And that makes it right to punish real men, women, and children today for the crimes of a thousand years ago?"   
  
"Silence!"   
  
" _Justice!_ " Anders' voice boomed like a hot flash of lightning, and Sebastian knew this time that it was real lightning, or at least magic.   
  
In the wake of Anders' final outburst, they stood there glaring at one another. Sebastian felt his fingers clenched in shaking fists, curled around sweaty palms, the hair on his arms standing on end. He smelled the sulfuric tang of choked-off magic, and realized with a start that Anders could easily have killed him before he even realized what happened.   
  
"Get out," Anders said, breaking the tense silence. When Sebastian didn't move immediately, he grit his teeth and pressed a half step forward, making Sebastian take a half step back to stay out of his space. "I said, _leave_."   
  
Sebastian's heart was pounding in his throat, too tight to speak. His face felt hot and he was still angry.

"I don't envy Serah Hawke the company he keeps," he said, trying to keep his voice level. He turned his back. "Good luck to you, Anders."

And then he left, to find his own way up out of Darktown, to the familiarity of the Chantry.


	3. Shadows Thrive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edited and Re-posted: 5/5/18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: Dark shit going on in Anders's head. Mentions of forced abortion, stillbirth mention, brief mention of implied sexual assault, vomit.

Nearly an hour passed with no new patients to distract him, and no templars breaking down the door. Anders finally extinguished the lanterns and fell, hands trembling and feeling cold from head to toe, onto a stool next to one of the cots. He fisted his hands in his hair to stop their shaking, his knee bouncing with pent-up nervous energy.   
  
How dare that sanctimonious Chantry boy talk to him like his condition had been caused by his own people? As if his child had been conceived from a mage taking advantage of their poor, vulnerable healer. Anders was still of half a mind to march after Sebastian and show him just how vulnerable Darktown's healer was, but the look in the archer's startled blue eyes had shown that he had been all too aware of how close he came to meeting the business end of Anders' magic.

Sebastian had been the Brother in the confessional that day. He had tried to comfort Anders without even knowing him, told him that he was fortunate to have the course of his life plotted out so clearly for him. Clearly he had never truly had a cause before. Anders  _ had _ the course of his life planned out, he had never had a  _ choice _ . And what was this child being forced on him but yet another way of stripping away any choice he had in his own fate? Maybe to someone who had never been threatened into falling in line, the thought of having a way forward laid out for him would be appealing. Maybe  _ Sebastian _ would have made a better choice to carry the Maker's child. Then at least Anders could have gotten some schadenfreude out of it; since chances were Hawke would have enlisted his help in getting the child to term.

But Sebastian's assumption that Anders had been  _ raped _ , that he had been forced to carry a child from something so mundane as an assault as if he didn't have ways to terminate the pregnancy if that did happen, that was what rubbed him the wrong way.

Anders could still feel Justice at the edges of his consciousness but since he'd gotten pregnant the second sense that the spirit provided had felt...numbed. More and more, like the growing baby was pressing against some kind of nerve. Whatever the cause, the result was the same. Justice was silent, and Anders was now alone in his indignation. He got to his feet and angrily swept the few pages and fewer books off of his desk. His palms pressed hard against the sturdy but rough-hewn wood to try and quell the trembling, hard enough he wouldn't have been surprised to feel a splinter. His effort only made the tremors travel up his arms instead, sinking like chilled fingers in his chest and robbing him of breath. He heard a flask shatter on the floor, knew he should clean it up, should control himself before he broke any more valuable equipment.   
  
But what did it matter? He'd pissed off a Chantry brother, at this very moment there were probably a dozen templars marching through Darktown headed straight for his clinic door. The safe haven of peace and healing that he'd spent nearly two years building would all be for naught, the people of Darktown would lose their healer, and all because he had struck out in anger. 

The panic gripped tighter, squeezed the breath from him, and he felt like the air was closing in around his head, too thick to breathe in more than shallow, desperate gulps. He felt like he would vomit, if he could only muster enough air in his lungs to heave, and not the nagging, restless nausea that he had grown used to over the past months and had largely learned to ignore.

_ YOU ARE PANICKING _ , he thought, or Justice thought. The thoughts-that-weren't-thoughts, his-but-not-his. The only outside perspective he'd had since merging with his friend. Sometimes the thoughts burst in just before Justice took over, but sometimes he was able to seize on them as a moment of clarity. He gulped in as much air as he could and held it, then let it out as slowly as he could.

He  _ was _ panicking. He knew that, he could recognize it. But he  _ could not _ go back to the Circle. He would rather die than be imprisoned again, than to be chained down like a dog by the same cruel masters who had branded Karl and severed his dreams. Who, in doing so, had severed Anders' as well.

He  _ would not _ go back to a circle. He felt that, with all of Justice's certainty. If there really were templars on their way at that very moment, he should run. Hide. And if that failed, he should go down fighting. He felt the burn of Justice sizzling at the edges of his vision at the thought, saw the cracks breaking through his skin and had to brace himself against the table before he swooned completely. He panicked, pushed against his friend, afraid of what Justice's possession would do to the child inside him. The feeling let up when he pushed back against it, wrestling control of his body back, and Justice fell back into his unsettling silence. As if his strings had been cut, Anders slumped onto his cot and put his face in his hands.   
  
"What have I done?" he spoke aloud, even though he was alone in the clinic.   
  
Well, not completely alone. His hand rested again on the taut, unnatural bump beneath his robes.   
  
"I'm sorry," he said, crumpling forward, eyes squeezing shut as he moved to wrap his arms protectively around his middle instead.   
  
The locked doors to the clinic rattled loudly, startling Anders. He jumped up, drawing his staff and only approaching the door so much to be able to hear and be heard through it.   
  
"Anders?" Hawke. Anders' grip on his staff tightened. The warrior was probably the second to last person he wanted to see right now.   
  
"Go away, Hawke," he called, his voice somehow staying level.   
  
"What happened?" Hawke asked, clearly worried. "Where's Sebastian?" Anders let out a laugh that came out of him sharp and sudden, almost more like a bark.   
  
"Probably halfway to the Chantry by now," he said. "Unless he just went straight to the nearest templars instead."   
  
"...Maker's balls," Garrett swore. "Anders, what happened?"   
  
"Just... go, Hawke," Anders said. He was losing the fight to stay furious with the warrior, with every earnestly concerned word from him. "You've done enough damage, don't you think?"   
  
"Anders, if you think you're really in danger, let me know so I can help you," Hawke pleaded. "I still have the key to the Amell estate basement, you can hide there-"   
  
"I said leave me alone," Anders repeated firmly. Hawke was silent for a moment, before Anders heard the sound of something heavy being set down on the ground outside the door.   
  
"Alright," the warrior said finally. "...I'm sorry, Anders." Anders didn't respond, didn't lower his staff until the sound of Hawke's full plate clanking disappeared entirely. He sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair.   
  
"...Me too, Hawke," he said softly, breaking the pregnant silence in the clinic. He propped his staff against the wall and started packing the few essentials he needed into a sack. He had to leave the clinic so that anyone who needed help could still come get it. It wouldn't be the same, but it could at least help some people. But he had to run, had to go back into hiding. If he was caught by templars, he doubted that he would even be able to claim his Warden status. And even if he could, he had escaped from them too. After the Warden-Commander had gone, Vigil's Keep had become every bit as much of a prison as the Circle. They made him give up his cat, for Andraste's sake. And that was only the beginning of it. 

And Anders had lived in Circles long enough to know what happened to babies born to mages there. They were wrenched from their mothers and taken away, given away as Chantry orphans until or unless the child showed their own magic and started the cycle over again. Anders never wanted this child, but the thought of losing them now made him sick, and Justice burned with righteous anger, knowing the treatment that the child would face.

It was fitting, though, Anders thought bitterly. After all, Andraste was taken from her mother and made a slave. Why wouldn't Her child meet the same fate?   
  
But that was assuming that the templars who apprehended him were careful enough, or that the Circle itself would even let him carry to term. He was still early enough along, another healer could force a potion on him and it would all be over. His mind raced to the worst case, to a dark cell buried deep underneath the tower, starved and beaten and forgotten. He felt a flutter beneath his ribs, still too faint to be felt from the outside, and tensed. If he was taken to the Gallows, peacefully or no, his child wouldn't survive. No one would believe its origin. No one did now; he saw how pityingly Hawke looked at him, the only reason he tolerated it was because of his own soft spot for the well-intentioned man. 

And if it wasn't killed in his capture it wouldn't survive the punishment he would surely face when they found out his escape history. He had delivered enough stillborn babies to be able to vividly picture cyanotic, perfectly-formed little bowed lips and lifeless, heavy muscles drawing tight with rigor mortis in his hands in the cold air of the world that had already rejected it. He didn't know if he would survive delivering a child alone, didn't even know if his status as a rare spirit healer would save him or if the Circle would even help him deliver. He had only begun to feel this child stirring inside him, and the thought of feeling nothing but heavy stillness instead was enough to turn his stomach.

His empty stomach lurched and he sat down heavily again, reaching for a nearby chamber pot, squeezing it between his knees and heaving up nothing but bitter bile. He let out a heavy groan and rubbed his forehead, closing his eyes and turning his face away from the battered metal pot, returning to it seconds later with another heave that seemed like it was trying to dislodge his organs.   
  
At the sound of knock at the door he jumped to his feet. The chamber pot clattered to the stone at his feet and rolled in a lazy circle until it bumped against his foot. He reached for his staff with one hand, the other wiping at his mouth and wincing at the bitter taste. He stayed so silent he was holding his breath, waiting for his visitor to announce themselves.   
  
"Blondie?" The familiar nickname released a knot of tension that had formed right between his shoulder blades, loosened something in his chest that let him breathe again. He didn't give an answer. "Right," Varric muttered. "Alright, I'm coming in, don't shoot." There was a quiet scrape, and then the point of a dagger slipped through the crack in the door and slid the bolt up and out of the way, and the door opened slowly for the rogue. Anders lowered his staff just barely, as Varric peeked inside. The dwarf jumped when he saw the staff aimed at him, putting up his hands defensively.   
  
"Easy, it's just me and Bianca," he said, slipping the rest of the way inside and gently nudging the door closed behind him with his foot so he didn't have to lower his hands. For some reason, those were the magic words that did it. Anders felt all the fight truly rush out of him, felt heavy tiredness take over his limbs, felt the staff fall from his fingers but didn't hear it hit the floor. He was tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Varric was good. Varric was safe. The dwarf relaxed when Anders' staff dropped and he jogged to meet him, one steady hand reaching up to Anders' back and the other touching his arm.   
  
"You look like shit, Blondie." The blunt statement startled a helpless laugh out of Anders, but it also got his feet back under him, and he brushed a few strands of hair from his face, reaching back to tighten the tie holding his hair.   
  
"It's been a long day," he said.   
  
"I heard," Varric said, scratching his cheek with one hand, clearly gauging whether to pry. "Here, sit down, I brought you something," he said instead, for which Anders was grateful. He let Varric guide him to sit back down on his cot, and watched curiously as Varric opened his coat and pulled out a sealed wooden container. Varric carefully pried the wax open with what was probably the same dagger that he'd unlocked the door with, and the minute that the seal was broken the smell of the Hanged Man's house specialty filled the air. Anders was suddenly reminded that he hadn't eaten since the stale heel of bread and bite of cheese that he'd been able to keep down that morning. Steam was still rising from the stew in enticing curls. Varric held it out to him, along with the lid which Anders noticed was actually a cup as well.   
  
"You didn't have to, Varric," Anders said. His stomach growled, and the rogue just shook his head fondly.   
  
"If you won't look after yourself and Blondie Jr, somebody has to. Not sure what the meat of the day is. Maybe horse," Varric mused. "Don't worry, I made sure it wasn't cat, just for you." The rogue was joking, which made him feel better enough as it was, but it was going a long way to helping Anders feel like he wasn't just waiting for an inevitable attack. Anders poured a portion of the stew into the cup and blew carefully on it before he sipped carefully at the broth to rinse some of the bitterness from his mouth. His nerves protested the idea of food less once the warm stew was in his body.

Apparently satisfied that he wasn't going to have to force-feed Anders, Varric sighed heavily and carefully lifted Bianca from his back, leaning her against Anders' desk as he sat down onto the stool next to it. He fished a spoon out of one of his seemingly bottomless coat pockets, and Anders took it gratefully, taking a bigger bite of the stew once he was sure that it would stay down.   
  
"So," Varric said. "Planning on taking a trip?" Anders followed Varric's line of sight to his pack, then looked back and found the dwarf watching him carefully. Suddenly, the stew required a lot more chewing, as he considered his answer, slicing a potato in half with the spoon.   
  
"How much did Hawke tell you?"   
  
"About as much as he knew," Varric answered honestly, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees. "You and Choir-boy had some kind of disagreement, he left - or you threw him out - and then you shut yourself up thinking that he was going to send templars after you."   
  
"You think he wouldn't?" Anders asked sharply.   
  
"Easy, easy Blondie. Think of it this way: if he had sicced a bunch of templars on you, don't you think they'd have come by now?" Varric asked. Anders didn't answer, because he did have to concede that point. "Besides," Varric continued. "Hawke said that he was going straight to the Chantry to keep Choir-boy from doing something stupid."   
  
Somehow, that was more of a comfort than pure logic was. Maker help him.   
  
"So what are you doing here?" Anders asked.   
  
"Now what kind of question is that?" Varric asked, reaching over to nudge Anders' knee with a smile. "Bianca wanted to make sure you were okay." His scrutinizing gaze lingered on Anders' middle, which Anders had accepted (a trial for the remaining shreds of his former vanity) was big enough to show when he was sitting.   
  
" _ Are _ you okay?" Varric asked, his tone gentler. Anders paused with another bite of stew at his lips.   
  
"We're fine," he half-mumbled into the stew (just because it was the Hanged Man's finest didn't mean it was particularly delicious, but it was filling and Varric had been absolutely right about Anders forgetting to eat). The dwarf relaxed, his expression softening.   
  
"Good," he said. Then, "So what did Choir-boy say to put his foot in it this time?" Anders grit his teeth and lowered the cup of stew to his knees, not wanting to do something foolish like throw it against the wall in anger.   
  
"He asked about...this," Anders said, indicating his condition. "He asked if someone forced it on me, like I was a victim to be coddled."   
  
"Ah," Varric said. "Clearly he hasn't seen the sparks you can set off when Hawke gets startled by giant spiders." Anders couldn't help but smile wryly. The smile faded quickly, though, and Varric's own triumphant smirk went with it. "Still worried about a visit from tall, mean, and clanky?" he asked.   
  
"It's hard to just...shut off the fear like that," Anders argued. "Having you here is helping, though. I'm grateful. I'd rather not be alone with my thoughts right now."   
  
"Then in that case, Blondie, Bianca and I are happy to stay as long as you need." Varric pulled a deck of cards from the other seemingly bottomless pocket. "How about a distraction?" he suggested. Anders looked at the cards and then at Varric, and then got up to get another stool so they could both play at the table.   
  
"I'll get better one of these days," he said lightly, settling his elbows on the table.   
  
"Sure you will, Blondie." Anders smiled fondly as Varric shuffled the cards, dealing out two hands. "Still, we can work on your tells some so maybe you won't lose all your coin next time."

"Why didn't he call the templars? Things weren't as bad in the Circle then as they would be later."   
  
"You're asking the wrong dwarf, Seeker." Varric leaned back in the chair he was all but pinned to, folding his fingers and holding the steeple of his index fingers near his chin. "Maybe he knew that Blondie had every right to be pissed over what he said. Maybe he realized what would happen to Rosy if he did that. I don't know, I never asked." He shifted his weight and crossed his legs, ankle to knee. "You never told me why you're so curious about this anyway, Seeker," he said. "Thought you wanted to know about the Champion of Kirkwall, not his companion's kid."   
  
"Don't be obtuse, it doesn't become you," the Seeker growled. "The Warden mage is a key player in the events of Kirkwall. Rumor has it a child was part of his cause, but your book barely mentions a child at all."   
  
"Well shit, can you blame me for wanting to let a kid stay a kid for a little longer?" Varric asked. "One of these days, storytellers will be crawling all over themselves to write Tales about Rosy. Maybe even a new Chant, who knows?" Somehow, he didn't flinch when her hands slammed down on the arms of the chair.   
  
"You cannot tell me that you seriously believe this child was fathered by the Maker."   
  
"Blondie sure did. Do I? Dunno. But it makes for a great story, doesn't it?" he smirked. She scowled.   
  
"Did Hawke?"   
  
"Sure, eventually. But at first he had his own theory, one that even Champion Foot-in-Mouth knew better than to share with the class."


	4. A Righteous Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian receives a divine visitation. And also a visit from Hawke.  
> Edited and Re-posted: 5/5/18

As Sebastian climbed the stairs to Hightown (as used as he was to Kirkwall, he often missed Starkhaven and its lack of stairs), he stopped when he heard the deep, sonorous Chantry bell toll the hour. It chimed half past, and then rang out once, twice, five times in total before it rang no more.   
  
He thought of the proud look on Elthina's face when she had given him leave to go out and do good works. He was affirmed, guaranteed a life of quiet contemplation with no questions asked, but he knew that she saw much more in him than those other disquieted Brothers and Sisters whose impure lives brought them to the Chantry doors. He wondered if she thought he belonged in Starkhaven, rather than in the Chantry. But on a good day he didn't even know what  _ he _ desired, let alone where he belonged. He rubbed his cheek again where the apostate had struck him. It stung, still, but not so much as his pride. 

After sunset, he told himself. Surely she couldn't be disappointed in him if he returned just after sunset. But, even with his new resolve, he still felt restless. He felt nauseated, troubled, like he was standing on top of the highest tower of the Chantry, or on the precipice of a terrible battlefield.

He couldn't stop thinking about Anders.   
  
How easy it would be to find the nearest templar, to give them the location of, or even lead them personally to the humble Darktown clinic. Anders was a dangerous apostate, even if he was an associate of Hawke's. And what did that mean, anyway? From what he could tell of Hawke's associates, Sebastian was the outlier, the pious Brother in a den of hedonists and apostates. He had met few of the man's companions, only the ones who had been following Hawke at their first meeting, but he was left with the feeling nonetheless that they were not impressed. Turning Anders over to the templars would brook him no favor, but he had turned away from worldly pleasures, he hardly cared if he fell lower in their esteem. He knew the righteous path, knew that mages belonged safe in Circles where templars stood guard to protect them from themselves.   
  
But when his mind turned from thought to action, he thought again about watching Anders in the clinic, about the gentle way that he had healed wounds and spoken to his patients and how sitting in that hallowed space had filled him with the same warmth as the first time he heard the Chant. About the way that Anders had stretched and soothed out the crick in his back, the swell of his stomach that was barely noticeable let alone cumbersome, and the way that he carried himself like he had accepted his burden without dread.   
  
Sebastian envied the apostate healer's certainty, even if he was by no means envious of his condition.   
  
There was no magic in the Vael bloodlines, not that he knew of. His family had been intensely pious, dedicating at least one member per generation to the Chantry (and Sebastian had resented his designation as that chosen one, up until he had met Elthina, until the older woman had proven herself more a mother to him than his own, and wasn't he lucky now, that serving the Chantry had saved his life), and he had no doubt that if there had ever been magic in his family the Vael name would be in the records of the Starkhaven Circle. Well, would be. If there were still a Starkhaven Circle left.    
  
Suffice it to say, then, that even though the Chantry was the hand to which the Templar Order (and by extension the Circle) was leashed, Sebastian himself, as a lay Brother, knew next to nothing about the Circles. He wanted to believe that no arm of the Chantry would ever bring harm to a child, let alone end the life of an unborn, but he knew that power corrupted on both sides, that drastic measures could be excused to protect innocents.   
  
Moreover, he knew Anders would fight for his freedom and his child, likely to desperate ends, and if his own measures didn't result in their deaths, the forceful methods that the templars would use to bring him into custody may very well do it for him.   
  
When Hawke found Sebastian, he was sitting on the steps to the Merchant's District, staring blankly at the now empty and closed-up stalls, at the ivy on the trellises and the way the light-colored stone changed color with the dying light. He had his knees pulled up to his chest, arms crossed on top of them. The rogue turned at the sound of approaching mail, then faced ahead again when he saw who it was, resting his chin on his folded arms. Hawke sat down on the solid stone next to him, mimicking his posture as best as he could with his less flexible armor in the way.   
  
"I kept his secret, if that's what you're here about," Sebastian said. Hawke scratched his beard.   
  
"Well, it's definitely a relief to know that I don't have to go make a public enemy of myself by starting a fight with another squad of templars," he said. "But, actually, I came to make sure you were alright." Sebastian looked up at him in surprise.   
  
"Me?" he repeated. "But I'm not..."  _ part of your group _ , Sebastian wanted to add, but cut himself off. Jealousy didn't become him. Hawke was a good man, he could keep any company he chose. Sebastian would not mind if Hawke considered him an ally; he would certainly welcome him as a friend.   
  
"I know," Hawke sighed. "Which is why I should have known better than to leave you and Anders alone like that. I should have given you some warning, or...I don't know. Something."   
  
"About which part?" Sebastian asked, a smirk starting slow at the corner of his lips. "The apostate healer part, or the unnatural bastard part?"   
  
"I've been wondering about that; in your professional opinion, would his child be considered a bastard? Since he or she does technically have a father."   
  
"You know, surprisingly the Chantry hasn't made its stance clear in such cases," Sebastian quipped. Hawke snorted a half-laugh at that, then sighed and leaned back onto the step behind him, stretching out his plated legs a couple steps down.   
  
"If it helps, I appreciate you not turning him in," he said. "And not just because I'd have to storm the Gallows, messy as that would be. It was... different with Bethany. She had never been to a Circle; Father had made sure she had a healthy fear of them, sure, but only in principle. She snuck off to the Chantry, back in Lothering. One of the newer Sisters there was a very good storyteller, which made her the instant friend of most of the children in a small village like Lothering." He shook his head. "Anyway, the point is that Bethany...kind of wanted to go. I think. I hope. She didn't fight them, anyway." Hawke looked up at the darkening sky. "Anders, though..." Sebastian tilted his head curiously, but stayed silent, waiting for the warrior to continue. "...He wouldn't have let them take him alive. He's got a history with Circles. And the Chantry."   
  
"I can't imagine why I was your first choice to assist him," Sebastian deadpanned. Hawke scoffed.   
  
"I don't know," he admitted. "Maybe it was dumb. I thought, you're the kind of pious that genuinely wants to help people. I thought you could be proof to him that not everyone associated with the Chantry wants to crucify all apostates and stick mage babies on pikes. And, you know, you're pretty sheltered, maybe... Look, I know you didn't get off on a good foot, but Anders is a good man. He works himself to death and doesn't even accept a single silver for his work. The day I met him he almost took my head off for defiling the peace and sanctuary of his clinic, so at least you're not alone there." Sebastian chuckled, despite himself. He had noticed or could guess those things, but hearing them from Hawke nonetheless made his heart feel somewhat lighter, more at peace with his decision not to go to the templars. 

"I know Mother would love it if I was half that passionate about anything," Hawke added. "I just thought, maybe meeting Anders would give you proof that mages can rule their own lives, outside of Circles, without being a danger to themselves and their neighbors. That they can do good for people." Hawke lapsed into silence, and Sebastian had nothing to say that the warrior wasn't probably saying to himself.   
  
"He thinks his child was fathered by the Maker," Sebastian said finally. Then, to clarify: "That was what we argued about."   
  
"He sure does think that," Hawke said diplomatically, and nothing more. Still, the archer was keen and the warrior not as subtle as he thought.   
  
"But you know who the real father is," he prompted. Golden-brown eyes jumped to him in surprise.   
  
"I have a guess," Hawke admitted. "But I also know he'd probably kill me if I told you. Especially if I'm wrong." Even still, the warrior ruffled his dark hair and sighed like he wanted to say more. So Sebastian waited. "I can tell you that absolutely no blood magic is afoot, though. And that it is definitely also not mine."   
  
"Well that's a relief," Sebastian said. "The last thing Kirkwall needs is a miniature you that can shoot fire." Hawke laughed, a bright, warm sound.   
  
"I'm not entirely sure that Mother won't try to adopt Anders when she finds out, even if it's not mine," he said. "I think she's well and truly given up on getting actual grandchildren from me, so she'll take what she can get."   
  
The bell chimed half seven, and Sebastian realized just how long he had been sitting with Hawke. He stood reluctantly.   
  
"I should return to the Chantry," he said. "Tell Anders I will keep his secret. But you should know, Hawke, that I do so only for you. With all due respect, I believe this makes us more than even." Hawke frowned, brows furrowing.   
  
"I thought-"   
  
"I have to consider my vows first, I'm sorry. But... I won't reject correspondence, if you want to keep in touch." Hawke considered the offer, then nodded.   
  
"I'll write when I have a more respectable address, then," he joked. But his smile was genuine when he got to his feet and offered Sebastian a handshake. "Thank you. I knew I could trust you." Sebastian shook Hawke's hand, surprised when the warrior gripped his elbow as well and deepened the handshake for a moment. When he pulled back, Sebastian watched him walk back toward the stairs to Lowtown, before turning his own feet toward the Chantry. He had a lot to pray for guidance about that night.   
  
He spent most of the night in devoted prayer, until Grand Cleric Elthina was able to sneak up on him and put a hand gently on his shoulder.   
  
"My child," she soothed, when her touch made him jump. "What troubles you so?" She was worried about him, he could tell from her voice. But how could he answer her, without betraying his promise to Hawke?   
  
"Nothing, Your Grace," he said meekly, leaning his brow forward to rest against his folded hands. "I've been reflecting on those that I helped and those that I was unable to help today." It felt wrong to lie to her, but there was truth in what he was saying, he supposed. He felt her quiet sigh like an arrow in his back. He was a terrible liar, and he knew it. Lying by omission to the Grand Cleric was by far more severe than all the lies that he had told his father about a missing sovereign here, a few silver pieces there.   
  
"If you feel you cannot trust me," she said softly, her voice motherly and kind. "Then I can only pray that you find the peace you seek, Sebastian," she said. He knew she wasn't trying to guilt him, but her words stung nonetheless. "May the light of the Maker guide your heart." Her hand left his shoulder, and without it he felt lost again.   
  
"Thank you, Your Grace," he said. Her footsteps echoed as she retreated to her own quarters, and it was in the silence that followed that Sebastian realized that he was now alone in the Chantry. He got up and went to his own private room, carefully unbuckling his shining white armor and hanging it on its stand before changing into his night dress. The sight of his humble bed made him realize how tired he truly was, and he had barely said his prayers and laid down his head before the bone-weariness overtook him and he was asleep.   
  
_ Sebastian. _ The voice that called to him was warm and rich, sure and confident, and Sebastian, who had never had to fear possession in the way that mages who traveled the Fade in their sleep did, trusted in the presence that surrounded him and relaxed into the feeling of grace. It sounded like a man's voice but softer, unfamiliar, like many voices speaking as one, but in single harmony. It sounded like a song, soothing as a lullaby and as inspiring as the first time that he had heard the Chant.   
  
_ Know me, Sebastian, for the time will soon come that will reshape Thedas, and you yourself will have a role to play. A child grows in the womb of an apostate, one whom those who claim to spread my word would kill and imprison for the gifts that he uses to aid the unfortunate. _   
  
" _ Anders? _ " Sebastian asked incredulously. "What more have I to do with him? I have done my part to spare him. The templars will not know his location from me."   
  
_ And who do you think it was that stayed your tongue when you passed a templar in the street? _ the voice argued, booming and terrible like a rumble of thunder.  _ Who laid His hand upon you to guide your heart? _ _   
_   
"Then I am truly in the presence of the Maker." Sebastian felt unmoored. This was beyond his wildest dreams. Except, perhaps, it wasn't. "What else can I do to spread your light, your word? Please, Maker, guide your humble servant."   
  
_ Your heart is full of conflict, my son, but stay and know peace. The child that will be born of the mage is of my will and Light. There will be those who reject my Herald, even in the dark, uncertain future. This child will have many enemies, but also many friends. You will be her guardian in the storms that she will face, and in return she will be your Grace and your Salvation. _   
  
"Why now?" Sebastian asked. "Why do you turn your face back to your people now?"   
  
_ There is a great evil on the horizon. The peoples of the earth must unite against this great darkness and against the wicked who would spread its reach across Thedas, and a child will be the one to lead them. _   
  
Sebastian felt weak, felt humbled, like a child at the knee of his father.   
  
_ Fear not, _ the voice proclaimed, and there was such great joy in its announcement that Sebastian trembled in the might of it and felt peace in his soul.  __ For the mage spoke truth. The child conceived on him is my will made flesh, my Herald and my Light. She will perform miracles and lead armies, and the righteous will follow her as they followed my Bride in time now lost to memory.   
  
When Sebastian awoke, dawn's fingers were curled over the horizon and he felt peace and righteous certainty in his heart. He knew what he had to do: he had to return to Darktown.


	5. A Friend Loves at All Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Party banter. Unrepentant party banter.  
> Edited and Re-posted: 5/5/18

"Did he?"  
  
"Come again?" Varric asked.   
  
"Did he seek out the apostate? Was he forgiven?"   
  
"Careful, Seeker, I might start to think you're getting invested," Varric teased, settling back in his chair, hands curling around the armrests. "I never pegged you for the forbidden romance type."   
  
"I have no idea what you're talking about," the Seeker said, clearing her throat.   
  
"Sure," Varric said, and shrugged. "Do you want me to continue or not?"   
  
"What do you think we are here for, dwarf?" the Seeker asked, looming over him.

"We-hell you could have fooled me, I thought I was here for afternoon tea," Varric said, feigning disinterest. He rubbed his hands together and then steepled his fingers.

"Whether or not he went that day, I know for sure that he went back at some point. He must have made some kind of good impression, or at least been a useful nuisance, because Blondie didn't kick him out again. Over the next few weeks, Blondie got bigger, Choir-boy spent pretty much every day helping out in the clinic, and then every night Blondie would come up to the Hanged Man to complain about how he thought rogues were supposed to know potions. But you know, he kept letting him stay, so he must have been doing _something_ right."

* * *

"Hawke hasn't been by in a couple days," Anders said. He and Varric were sitting at the huge table in Varric's quarters where the dwarf hosted his friends. He had the seat to Varric's left, staying close to the rogue (and Bianca, who was propped against Varric's chair on his right). The Hanged Man, and especially this room, was so inescapably Varric that he knew he was safe here, that no one would dare cross the dwarf on his own territory. But it made him feel better nonetheless, to stay close to another warm body, just in case.  
  
"Yeah, well I hear he's been having to hold a sword to the guys he's hired to help rebuild the estate," Varric said. "He told me he'd be here tonight, give it another hour." Anders shook his head fondly, raised the tankard of watered-down ale that Corff had weeks ago stopped looking at him funny for ordering. Suddenly he frowned, setting his tankard back down and rubbing at his stomach.   
  
"Oh, calm down in there," he muttered. Varric set down his own mug and leaned forward a little.   
  
"Everything... all right in there?" he asked, gesturing with one gloved hand at Anders' stomach. Anders looked up at Varric and smiled.   
  
"Everything's fine, we're just getting a little active, it's perfectly normal." His smile turned into a proud, teasing grin, and he scooted closer. "Do you want to feel?" Varric hesitated, glancing from Anders' belly to his face.   
  
"Uh," he said. "That's okay, Blondie, I'm not- I mean, I've never..." Anders chuckled.   
  
"The famed Varric Tethras at a loss for words?" he teased, unhooking the last ring buckle that still fit over his stomach. "I should get a painter to immortalize this moment."   
  
"Ha, ha," Varric said. Anders put a hand to his stomach, pressing carefully, feeling for the next spot of motion.   
  
"Here- put your hand right here," Anders said, turning just slightly and pulling his coat aside. Varric took a moment before he peeled off his glove and laid his thick, heavy palm against Anders' threadbare linen undershirt. He could feel Anders' skin, taut and solid and warm beneath his palm. He couldn't even imagine what it felt like - luckily, being a dwarf and therefore both resistant to magic and probably sterile meant that he would never have to. Nothing happened for a long moment, and when Varric did feel movement beneath his hand he thought he was imagining it. Even if he didn't believe Anders' story about the kid's origin, there was sure no denying that there was a kid in there now.   
  
When it happened again, he looked up at Anders, who smiled proudly back.   
  
"That _has_ to hurt," he said. Anders shrugged.   
  
"Oh, I could tell you _several_ things I've been going through that are far more uncomfortable than a little acrobatics," the healer said, grinning at the way that Varric went pale.   
  
"I don't even wanna think about it," the dwarf said, taking his hand back and slipping his glove back on. Anders chuckled, pulling his robe closed and reaching for his tankard. He took another drink. "You know," Varric said conversationally. "You seem pretty content for a guy who got saddled with a kid a few months ago." Anders raised an eyebrow.   
  
"Should I be beating my breast in lamentations? Mourning the sad fate of my once-pristine figure?" he asked, slumping dramatically against his seat and putting the back of his hand to his forehead in an exaggerated swoon.   
  
"I wouldn't put the second one past you," Varric teased with a friendly laugh. "But no, I meant that as a good thing. You're downright glowing. And not in the usual way."   
  
"I think a big part is the fact that I don't feel like I'm doing this alone," Anders admitted, his hand rubbing the high curve of his stomach. "Having you and Hawke has been what's been keeping me sane, honestly."   
  
"Not Choir-boy?" Varric asked, guarding his expression behind his drink.   
  
"Oh Maker, no," Anders laughed. "I thought it would be easier having someone who didn't completely think I was mad. I was hoping my white knight would have at least some skill at healing. And be less literal." He drummed his fingers on his stomach, the other hand raising his tankard to his lips again. "At least he seems to have _some_ bedside manner, which is more than I can say for, well, most of our other acquaintances." His smile was hidden behind the wooden vessel, but Varric was doing a piss-poor job of hiding his own shit-eating grin.   
  
"My, my, Blondie," he drawled, setting his own mug down again and steepling his fingers. "I've read enough romances to see where this is going. Do I detect a bit of fondness for our aggressively evangelical friend?" Anders choked on his watered-down ale, barely managing to swallow without spraying it across the table before he started coughing.   
  
"No!" he said, voice still a little hoarse after the coughing subsided. "He's- he's insufferable, and sanctimonious, and completely and willfully ignorant to the injustices carried out at every level of the institution that he so staunchly defends! He thinks he can just bat his pretty blue eyes and that will excuse the words that come out in that stupid, charming accent of his," he complained. He watched Varric dip his quill in his ink pot and drag over one of the many blank sheets of paper scattered across the table, and squinted. "Wait- are you- don't write this down, you fiend!" he exclaimed with a disbelieving laugh.   
  
"Oh, there is no way I'm not going to immortalize you admiring Choir-boy's 'pretty blue eyes,'" Varric said, practically cackling with glee.   
  
"You leave this out of your stories or I shall never forgive you, Varric Tethras," Anders said. Varric put a hand to his heart with an exaggerated offended noise.   
  
"You wound me, Blondie," he teased. "I'm not just a writer, I am a craftsman of stories. I know better than to start telling one when I don't know the ending yet. But you are sweet on him, aren't you?" Anders buried his face in his hands, shaking his head in disbelief.   
  
"You are an absolute devil," he replied, muffled behind his hands. "I can't imagine why I'm still listening to you."   
  
"Nah, I get it. You want to corrupt the poor, innocent Chantry boy. I think the Orlesians have a word for that-"   
  
"VARRIC!"   
  
"Oh no, what has Varric done now?" asked an amused voice from the door to Varric's suite.   
  
"Don't listen to him, Hawke, I have been on my best behavior," Varric said too cheerfully into his tankard.   
  
"Considering I've seen your best behavior, now I'm even more worried," Hawke teased back.   
  
"You're fashionably late," Anders said, smiling as Hawke slid into the chair next to his. The warrior groaned and put his forehead down on the table.   
  
"The carpenter was in again today," he said. "I swear, I'm afraid to leave that man alone with his own tools."

"Has he driven a nail into his own foot yet?" Varric asked.

"No, and he's only got another week to do it or you lose a gold piece," Hawke said, turning his head to look down the table at Varric.

"Damn," Varric said. "Well, from the stories you've been telling I for one believe in his incompetence." He got up from his throne at the head of the table to go order Hawke a drink. "Oh- before I forget. Hey, Blondie, show Hawke what you showed me," he said, patting the mage's shoulder as he passed.

Hawke lifted his head, turning his expectant honey-gold eyes on Anders, like a mabari waiting for a treat. Anders took a deep breath and held it, waiting to see where the baby was going to move next. When he felt it under his hand, he reached for Hawke's hand and guided it to the spot. Hawke's gaze was fixed on Anders' stomach from the moment that the healer pressed his hand to the hard swell of skin, and the great bear of a man let out an excited gasp when he felt movement against his palm.

"Maker's breath," he said in awe. "Anders, that's- this is incredible, is that really..."  
  
"She's saying hello to her uncle," Anders said, feeling a flutter of nervousness putting the unspoken suggestion out there. The warrior beamed, leaning forward and nearly covering the entirety of Anders' bump with his enormous, callused hands, nudging Anders' robes back as he did.   
  
"Hello in there," Hawke cooed. He shot Anders a mock pout when the mage's chuckle jostled his belly. "You'll behave yourself in there, and take it easy on your father, won't you? Your Uncle Hawke and Uncle Varric are excited to meet you-"   
  
"Nuh-uh," Varric said, making his way back to the table and putting down a tankard of ale on the table next to Hawke before going back to his own seat. "You are. I don't do babies. Too tiny and fragile." His protest lacked conviction nonetheless.   
  
"-but you take your time and get big and strong," Hawke said, undeterred by Varric's protest. "We'll do all we can to make sure it's safe for you when you're ready to come out." Anders smiled proudly, reaching out to bury his fingers in the soft, messy strands of Hawke's black hair. Then he playfully pushed the warrior back.   
  
"Get off before you make me cry," he only half-joked. Hawke smiled, waiting for one last flutter against his fingers before he withdrew his hands entirely. "So!" Anders said, trying to master his emotions. "Other than this ongoing war against the poor tradesmen of this fair city, did you do anything else exciting today?"   
  
"Oh!" Hawke exclaimed. "Yes, in fact I did. A little birdie told me that somebody had been lamenting the lack of affordable figs in the market, so..." Anders flushed with a little shame, remembering how he'd ranted to Varric the night before like some kind of madman. He could only imagine what the dwarf had told Hawke about that conversation.   
  
"Maker, you didn't go terrorize some poor merchant for my sake, did you?" he asked.   
  
"Never!" Hawke exclaimed in mock offense, reaching down to the floor next to him. "I tromped down the Wounded Coast and found what must be the only fig tree in all the Free Marches." Anders laughed, as Hawke retrieved a small basket with a handkerchief covering its contents. He presented the basket proudly to Anders, who pulled back the red handkerchief and looked upon the four barely-ripe figs like they were jewels.   
  
"You didn't have to do this for me," he said. Hawke smiled.   
  
"One of the only things I remember of Mother being pregnant with the twins was sneaking into the fields and stealing apples for her because the fruitseller overcharged for them," he said. "I remember enough to know that cravings are nothing to trifle with. By the time the twins were born, Father feared Mother's wrath more than the threat of any demon." Anders chuckled, and Hawke sized him up. "From what I hear, you've been quite the taskmaster yourself. Putting the fear of the Maker in our dear friend Sebastian?"   
  
"Andraste's flaming knickerweasels! Not you too!" Anders groaned dramatically. Varric laughed.   
  
"Give it up, Hawke, Blondie's not interested in sharing his clandestine fantasies," he said.   
  
"A pity, that, I bet he has quite the imagination. Hey, Varric, is it true that rogues are known for their...flexibility?" Anders rolled his eyes, shaking his head.   
  
"I take back everything I said earlier," he said. "I hate both of you. I'm going back to my clinic now." Both Hawke and Varric laughed, but when he actually spread his hands on the table like he was about to struggle to his feet, Hawke pinned him in place with a boyish, pleading look that should have looked ridiculous on his bearded face.   
  
"No, Anders, stay," he said. "I just got here, and you're barely even half finished with your drink! I'm sorry, we'll talk about something else." Anders settled back into his seat, picking his tankard back up and grumbling distrustfully as he took another sip. Hawke beamed at him and splayed one big, warm hand over Anders' shoulder, and something warm and soft unfurled in Anders' chest at the simple, casual affection.   
  
God, he was pathetically touch-starved. He quaffed deeply from his tankard, like he was trying to drown that small, needy feeling.   
  
"Are you really doing okay?" Hawke asked.   
  
"I'm fine," Anders reassured him with a smile. "We're both coming along right on schedule. Soon enough I'll be the size of a house, and I won't be able to manage all the stairs anymore." Hawke chuckled.   
  
"Are you sure it's healthy to keep working in the clinic all the way up to when the baby's born?" he asked.   
  
"Hawke," Anders said, looking at the warrior point-blank. "Do you think your mother took a break when you were born?"

"I'm almost positive she didn't," Hawke conceded. "But she wasn't taking care of sick people day in and day out, either."

"We'll be _fine_ ," Anders said firmly. "I've delivered plenty of children, I think I can manage to deliver my own just fine."

"Well, I know better than to have this fight with you," Hawke said, wisely. "Just don't overdo it, please," he added.  
  
"Healers make the worst patients," Anders confessed. His tone softened at the worried look on Hawke's face. "But it's not just my life at stake, here. I promise, I'll take care of us. Then I can get back out there to take care of you."   
  
"He needs it," Varric joked.   
  
"Hey, Danger is my middle name," Hawke said.   
  
"More like Trouble," Varric parried. The three of them laughed, and Anders couldn't help but bask in how comfortable he felt with the two best friends. He felt _safe_ . For the first time since Warden-Commander Tabris left Amaranthine and left him behind, he felt...at home. Justice was a warm, quiet reassurance in the back of his mind, vigilant and ever-disapproving of this tomfoolery, but feeling more like Anders' friend than he had in quite some time.   
  
They spent a couple of hours (plus two more tankards each and six more trips to the bathroom for Anders) talking about anything that crossed their minds. Eventually cards came out, and by the time any of them noticed what mark the candle had burned to, Anders couldn't protest Hawke's offer of an escort home.   
  
Luckily, there was only one band of mercenaries on the street, and Hawke's sword ended the conflict pretty quickly. They had to pause and sit down on the steps so that Anders could quickly heal a lucky hit on Hawke, but then the warrior was dropping Anders off at his clinic door.   
  
"Goodnight, Anders," Hawke said.   
  
"Goodnight, 'Uncle Hawke,'" Anders replied, before he slid the clinic door closed and headed back to the curtain that served as a divider between his living space and the rest of the clinic. He had barely stripped down to just the undershirt that also served as his night dress, when there was a frantic pounding at the door. He went still and silent, pulling his breeches back up and reaching for his staff.

"Healer!" came the hushed, frantic cry from the other side of the door.

"Coming!" Anders called out, stomping his feet back into his boots. He made sure his shirt hadn't gotten half-tucked into his breeches as he made his way to the door. "Coming," he called again, quieter, trying to quell the pounding of his heart as he braced himself and cracked the door. He knew he had allies, knew that there were more people who would protect him from Templars than would turn him in, but the fear was there nonetheless.

But there was no shining silver full plate or red silk skirts on the other side of the door, just a woman desperately cradling something in her arms.  
  
"Please," she begged. Anders took in the careworn lines on her face, her wet, red-rimmed eyes, and the bundle of rags in her arms that upon closer inspection turned out to be a child. "Please, you have to save my boy."   
  
"Come in," Anders said without hesitation, opening the door to let her in. "Lay him down over there on that cot."   
  
"Oh, bless you, thank you," the woman sobbed. The child was flushed with fever, and mewled pathetically when he was laid down on the cot, all emaciated limbs and protruding stomach. Anders pulled his hair back off his face and re-tied it, rolling up the long sleeves of his undershirt as he moved over to sit next to the boy, closing his eyes and calling up healing magic to his hands.   
  
It was going to be a long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /clears throat Disclaimer time  
> so yes I know drinking while pregnant is a No No but it is also relatively modern of a discovery; particularly since in olden times, potable water was hard to come by. That being said, between Justice forbidding Anders from getting drunk, and the knowledge that excess anything is a bad idea while pregnant, he's taking his ale heavily diluted so that he doesn't have to use magic in public to boil water and make sure it's potable (which is what he does at the clinic).  
> The beliefs and practices of these fictional medieval characters in no way reflect my own knowledge of modern medical practices or my own personal opinions and beliefs, etc etc.


	6. Balance Sundered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is why we can't have nice things.  
> Edited and Re-posted: 5/5/18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings for this chapter: mentions of and background Domestic Abuse, Miscarriage.

Sebastian had fallen into a routine over the past weeks. He woke early, sang his prayers, made his daily devotions and then, on days when he had no sermon or confessional scheduled, he headed to Darktown to meet Anders at his clinic. Since it had become harder for the mage to fetch water and bend to scrub linens, he had begun to wait to light the lanterns until Sebastian or one of his other volunteer assistants was there to keep the clinic running smoothly while Anders focused on the patients.   
  
So Sebastian was alarmed when he arrived that morning, a morning when he had been free to come as soon as he was ready and had been there no later than Anders usually started work for the day, to find the doors already open and the lanterns already blazing.   
  
"Anders...?" he called, stepping into the clinic. He almost didn't recognize the mage in the dingy grey undershirt that he was wearing without his usual more noticeable robe and jacket over it, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. If it weren't for the warm blue healing energy pouring off his hands, he would have looked almost no different from anyone else among the poor unfortunates of Darktown.   
  
He didn't have time to wonder about the healer's state of undress before the light around Anders' hands dissipated, and Anders' eyes rolled back as he swooned, unable even to catch himself on his staff. Sebastian crossed the distance faster than he thought himself capable of, catching Anders against his chest. Anders' sharp cheekbones were flushed and looked nearly hollowed, the skin around his eyes purpled with exhaustion. How long had he been at this?   
  
It took Anders longer to stir than it usually did when he overexerted his healing. It was an art that came naturally to Anders, but not always easily; then again, Sebastian didn't imagine bringing someone back from the brink of death would be easy on anybody. Sebastian himself had witnessed Anders heal using his magic more times than he could count, watched the mage stumble and lean heavily on his staff, or even sometimes seat himself on a nearby stool or an empty cot to recover for a second. He hadn't ever seen him use it when he wasn't pregnant, but as his condition had progressed each use of his magic seemed to take more out of him.   
  
"Anders," Sebastian called, shifting the man's weight in his arms to shake him gently. "Come on now, come back to me." Anders' brow furrowed, and he groaned miserably, one hand coming up to his forehead and the other bracing himself against Sebastian and finding the rogue's shoulder.   
  
Relief rushed over Sebastian in a wave when he saw Anders' golden eyes flutter open. But just as quickly, hot fury took its place as the healer pushed himself back to his feet, putting an arm's length between him and Sebastian.   
  
"You didn't sleep last night," Sebastian said accusingly, reaching to grip his shirt sleeve. "How long have you been pushing yourself like this?"   
  
"There was... Something was going around," Anders said, shaking off the last of the faintness. "I've seen dozens of children with it. It didn't respond to the usual cures, so I've had to use more magic than I normally do-"   
  
"And you didn't stop to think that maybe - in your condition - you shouldn't be exposing yourself to an illness that's affecting  _ children _ ?" Anders' golden eyes lit up with a fury so hot Sebastian had a brief thought of the blue fires that he had heard of alchemists being able to harness.   
  
"I have been fighting all night to keep these children alive long enough for their fevers to break, and you dare to scold me for putting myself in danger?" Anders growled, wrenching his arm out of Sebastian's grip. Sebastian's hand hung in the air for a moment, before he let it fall to his side, fists clenching.   
  
"Aye, I dare," he said indignantly. "And I'll dare you to get some rest, Anders, before you take another step."   
  
"Or what," Anders challenged. "You'll chain me? Lock me up for my own good?" The words landed like a slap in the face. Sebastian's eyes widened, and he stared at Anders for a moment, shocked and hurt. Chastened, he raised his hands imploringly.   
  
"Anders, you know I'm just trying to protect-"   
  
"I know what you're trying to protect," Anders said. His tone made something like guilt coil deep in the pit of Sebastian's stomach. He couldn't meet the healer's eyes, so he glanced away to take in the clinic.   
  
"Is everyone here right now stable?" Sebastian asked. There were only ten or so people left in the clinic, six or so sleeping children on the cots. Anders looked around, then nodded. "And there's nothing else to be done for them that couldn't be handled without magic?"   
  
"For the moment," Anders said.   
  
"Then there's nothing left that you haven't already taught me to do," Sebastian said. "Leave things to me for a few hours and rest, Anders," he pleaded. "I can help battle dehydration as well as can magic, I like to think I've picked that much up from you." Anders' eyes narrowed suspiciously at him, as he considered the offer.   
  
"You'll wake me the second something comes up that you can't handle," he said finally. It wasn't a question.   
  
"The very second," Sebastian agreed. Without Anders' usual feathered jacket, it was easy to see how the tension bled from his shoulders, though his brow was still creased with worry. Sebastian sighed with relief. He reached out and put the back of his hand to Anders' forehead, and frowned at the warmth he found there. The mage, infuriatingly, brushed off his hand, knowing his concern was harder to shake.   
  
"I stoked the fire to help sweat the fever out," he said. "It's hot in here and I've been working all morning, that's all."   
  
"You are a terrible liar," Sebastian said. Anders cracked the first smile Sebastian had seen all day.   
  
"But I'll be an even worse patient," he said. "So for your sake, you'd better pray I'm not lying." Sebastian rolled his eyes, but rewarded him with a friendly smile.   
  
"Fine. To bed with you," he said, shooing Anders toward the back room. Anders' expression sobered again.   
  
"I mean it, if you get overwhelmed, wake me," he said. "This clinic is the only hope for many of these people, I can't fail them-"   
  
"You won't," Sebastian reassured him. "You're only human, you need to rest too. Now off you get. I've been wanting to practice the skills you've been teaching me." Anders smiled at that, soft and gentle, and Sebastian felt a smile on his own lips in kind.   
  
"Brother Sebastian will be tending to the sick and wounded in my absence," Anders announced to the clinic, his voice barely steady when he raised it. The patients had seen Anders swoon and heard the argument. At this point, his condition was becoming obvious, and so those mothers remaining to watch over their children nodded in understanding as the healer took his leave with a couple final instructions to Sebastian. 

By now, Sebastian had observed enough to know how Anders set up his rounds, so once he was sure that Anders had truly gone back to the tiny partitioned area in which he slept, he turned his attention to the next bed. The little girl's skin was warm, but not hot, and Sebastian carefully applied a rag soaked in cooled water with steeped elfroot. Then he saw that the girl's mother was knelt at the side of the girl's cot in prayer.

"Would you like me to pray with you?" he asked gently. She looked up at him and nodded, and he knelt to one knee beside her, putting one hand on her back and the other over her daughter's small, warm hand.   
  
"Most forgiving lady of heaven, keep your hand on this child and safeguard her from the flames..." he began softly, reciting a couple lines of the Chant that gave him strength. "...For you are most righteous, and your will is utmost." The skills that Sebastian had picked up in the healing arts over time helping Anders in the clinic were hard-won, but he was most confident comforting those who struggled with uncertainty and grief. This was where his strength lay, he thought, as the good mother looked at him with a tearful smile.   
  
"Bless you, Brother," she said, when he moved to stand.   
  
"And to you," Sebastian replied with a smile.   
  
An hour or so later by the light coming in through the high windows, Sebastian was wondering if he should send some of the children home who had begun to recover, or if he should wait for Anders to be sure. Compounding the dilemma was the fact that many of the adults and older siblings who had brought the sick little ones had had to leave to find work, some taking the children with them and others leaving them with the promise they'd be back soon. Sebastian sighed heavily and sat down on a stool. 

A few cases unrelated to the illness that Anders had mentioned had come in: a man with a broken leg who had been splinted, instructed, and sent on his way, and a woman who had cast furtive glances at her husband as Sebastian examined the cut on her forehead and bruises on her arm and throat. Sebastian wasn't so withdrawn from the world in the Chantry's ivory tower not to recognize her plight, and he had offered to let her stay, "for observation." Her husband had relented only after Sebastian also pointed out that he wasn't actually the healer, and that she should wait for him to return.

The woman had come to life after her husband left, claiming herself a stool where she now sat regaling the more alert children with fairy tales while they sat crowded around her. He was certainly thankful for her help keeping the children out of trouble so he could puzzle over what he was going to do with them. Sebastian slumped onto an empty cot with a heavy sigh, already exhausted. How did Anders  _ do _ this day in and day out.

He'd never been happier to see Hawke than that moment, when the warrior appeared with Varric and Merrill beside him.

"Please tell me this is a social call," said Sebastian, already standing ready to either help how he could or go get Anders.

"Where's Anders?" Hawke asked, looking around.   
  
"Resting," Sebastian said, running his hand through his hair. "Hopefully."   
  
"And he left  _ you _ in charge?" Varric asked incredulously.   
  
"I may not be a healer, but I've learned quite a bit from him," Sebastian said defensively.   
  
"Still, though, it is a little strange for Anders to leave his clinic in the middle of the day like this," Merrill chimed in. Sebastian shook his head.   
  
"Not terribly surprising, in his condition. He didn't sleep at all last night, I could only convince him to lay down after he nearly passed out."   
  
"Ah," Hawke said. "Now that does sound like Anders. In that case!" the warrior clapped his hands, careful not to make too much more noise than necessary. "It sounds like you could use a few extra hands. Do you mind?"   
  
"By all means," Sebastian said.   
  
Hawke was more than willing to roll up his sleeves and take up the task of scrubbing linens and procuring food and fresh water to distribute among the patients, laughing and joking with the kids who had come through their crises to encourage them to eat and get their strength back up.   
  
Merrill, meanwhile, while nowhere near Anders' healing ability magically, was far more knowledgeable than Sebastian with herbs, potions, and other remedies, and she put herself to work replenishing the stock of potions that Anders had taught Sebastian how and when to use but not how to make. A couple times, Sebastian looked up when Hawke laughed loud enough to be heard across the clinic, and saw the dainty little elf watching the warrior with a lovesick expression that turned into an embarrassed flush when she realized there were eyes on her. Whenever Hawke had the chance to sit down, he did so next to the fire with Merrill, who he had smiling and giggling and blushing within moments every time.   
  
"In case you're wondering, Choir-boy," came a voice from Sebastian's elbow, and the archer jumped guiltily at having been caught watching Hawke and Merrill again. "You and Blondie don't quite give each other looks that smitten." Varric narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "In fact, I still haven't pinned down why you're still here. So, what is it?"   
  
"Pardon?"   
  
"I mean, you're here almost every day," Varric said. "And I know Blondie's too proud to be asking you for help and too poor to be paying you. So, is it the feathers? The whole broody, tragic hero look? 'Cause if that's what you're into, I feel like I should warn you that you're in for more than you bargained for-"   
  
"I'm not  _ interested _ in Anders!" Sebastian exclaimed, feeling his face flush to the tips of his ears. Varric shifted his weight and crossed his arms expectantly.   
  
"So are you just getting in his good graces because... what, you believe the shit about his kid being the Maker's?" Sebastian opened his mouth to reply. "Ah- save it, I already know you do." Varric's expression turned even more guarded. "So what, is this some kind of crusade for you? To rescue a child from being raised by an apostate?" Sebastian grit his teeth.   
  
"No," he said. "Of course not, it's hardly like I'm in any position to raise a child myself."   
  
"Good," Varric said. "I know, it's up to Blondie who he lets be part of Blondie Junior's life. But if, say, somebody wanted to try to take that kid away from him... Well, let's just say Bianca and I both would have something to say about it."   
  
"He'll have nothing to fear from me, Varric," Sebastian said, putting the matter to bed. Varric scrutinized him for another moment before he decided he was apparently satisfied with his answer. The dwarf shrugged his shoulders.   
  
"I'm going to go see if that girl over there could use any help entertaining the anklebiters," he said. "You'd better get back to work before Blondie catches you slacking, Choir-boy."   
  
Before Sebastian could reply, a boy appeared at the clinic doors, supporting an older woman against him.   
  
"Help!" he cried. He stood there sobbing as Sebastian (and Hawke, whose attention had been caught by the dramatic entrance) ran forward to help. Hawke gently lifted the woman, as delicately as if she was his own mother, carrying her to a cot that had just been cleaned. Sebastian moved to follow the warrior, but was stopped by the boy's hand on his arm.   
  
"Please, Messere," the boy begged. "Please save Mama!"   
  
"We'll do all we can," Sebastian promised, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder and bending just a little closer to his level. "Be brave and stay back here, can you do that?" The boy wiped his snotty nose on his filthy sleeve, and nodded. "Good, brave lad," Sebastian said with a smile and a final bracing squeeze to his shoulder. As he turned to go to the woman, he glanced at Varric and nodded. The dwarf nodded back.   
  
"Hey, kid..." Sebastian heard Varric say before he was too far across the clinic and the quiet voice was lost to him.   
  
The woman was barely conscious, wearing a bloodstained threadbare slip and little else. Now that she was lying down, Sebastian noticed with a sick feeling that her thighs were slick with blood, and her face was flushed with fever. 

"Blessed Andraste," he swore mildly. He spared a glance to the partition at the back of the clinic, considered waking Anders for this. He'd never handled anything like this before.   
  
"What do we do?" Hawke asked, his voice soft and pained. Sebastian shook his head. He was the youngest child of a couple who hadn't (as far as he knew) struggled with fertility, and even though Hawke was an eldest child Sebastian could only assume that he had the same lack of experience.   
  
"Well, you can quit standing around gawking like a couple of seagulls," Merrill said from behind them. Both Hawke and Sebastian turned in surprise. Sebastian didn't know her quiet, birdlike voice could sound so firm. "Sebastian, go get an elfroot potion. Hawke, a bowl of cool water and a cloth. Please and thank you!" She didn't wait for them to scatter to their assigned tasks before taking up their spot next to the woman.   
  
Within an hour, Merrill had broken the woman's fever and cleaned her up, leaving her to sleep peacefully, her son sitting vigil next to her.   
  
"How did you know what to do?" Hawke asked Merrill.   
  
"I was the Keeper's First," she explained. "I may not be much of a healer, but when something like this happened in the clan we usually had to be there, to... give the child's spirit to the Gods." She looked sadly at the floor. "And sometimes the mother's, too."    
  
"Not today," Sebastian said, giving her a smile when she looked up at him. "That woman will live to raise her son because of you." Merrill smiled sweetly.   
  
"Thank you, Sebastian," she said. "That's very sweet of you to say."   
  
"Hey, Hawke?" Varric called across the clinic. Sebastian felt panic rise in his chest when he saw Varric standing at the partition separating Anders' "quarters" from the rest of the clinic. "Come here and take a look at this." The hesitant tone of Varric's voice made Sebastian's heart sink. Hawke must have felt the same worry, because he crossed the room in record time, looking behind the partition.   
  
"Oh, Maker," Hawke swore. A flash of panic like too-red blood on creamy pale skin struck Sebastian hard.   
  
"What?" he asked, racing to join them. "What is it? What's wrong?" The panic tight in his lungs made it hard for him to breathe, let alone speak. When he tried to look in, Varric snapped the partition shut and Hawke reached out to stop him.   
  
"Easy, Choir-boy, you don't need to see-"   
  
"What happened? What's wrong with Anders?" Hawke and Varric glanced at each other.   
  
"Blondie wouldn't want you to see him like this," Varric said firmly.   
  
"We'll take care of him," Hawke promised, and only then did Sebastian look at him, instead of trying to see anything through the ratty curtain.   
  
"Is- is the baby..." he asked. It felt like there was a ball of ice sat cold and heavy in the pit of his stomach. Anders had been  _ fine _ a couple hours before, he didn't understand what could have happened in so short a time that would have Hawke and Varric acting like this.   
  
"Far as I can tell, Baby's still fine," Varric said, scratching the stubble on his jaw. "Still in there, anyway. I don't know how, but we'll do our best to keep it that way. Okay?" Sebastian nodded, and Hawke pulled his arm back.   
  
"It's getting late," Hawke said diplomatically. "Maybe you should head back to the Chantry, Sebastian." Varric watched Sebastian for a moment before he slipped through the partition. He could hear Varric speaking quietly, but the dwarf was speaking too softly for Sebastian to make out what he was saying. It was useless to try and argue with them, and whether or not they believed the child's origin, they were Anders' friends. Sebastian trusted them with his life. He turned and looked at the patients still in the clinic, and then at the woman who went back to telling the children stories when she saw him glance at her.   
  
"Johanna," he called softly, motioned for her to come aside. She paused the story she was telling the children and rose to meet him. He reached out and put his hand on her arm gently. "I'm going back to the Chantry. Would you come with me? You can seek sanctuary there-"   
  
"Brother Sebastian," she said, cutting him off with a smile. She put her hand on top of his. "Thank you. But Colborn is a good man, really. I'll just wait here, he should be returning soon."   
  
"He beat you," Sebastian argued, keeping his voice low. "How can you say he's a good man?"   
  
"It was an accident," she said. "He brought me to a healer, didn't he?" A sick feeling welled up in Sebastian's stomach. There would be no convincing her to come with him. Not now, anyway.   
  
"Aye," he said quietly. "But, Johanna, if you need sanctuary..."   
  
"I'll look to the Chantry. Thank you, Brother." He nodded.   
  
"May you walk in the Light."   
  
"And you as well," she said.   
  
When he was ready to leave, Hawke led Sebastian up to Hightown through an entrance in the basement of his estate. Sebastian was thankful for it because the sun had set long ago and he was in no mood to fight his way home through darkened streets.   
  
"We'll take care of Anders," Hawke promised again, at the door to the Chantry.   
  
"Do," Sebastian said. "Please. And let me know of his condition. I'll be praying." Hawke nodded.   
  
"Good night, Sebastian. I'll be in touch."


	7. Steel my heart against the temptations of the wicked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sebastian learns something about Anders and Anders learns something about himself.  
> Edited and Re-posted: 5/5/18

_ Sebastian _ _   
_ _   
_ _ I hope you're well-recovered from the other day, I know it was probably more eventful than you expected. No change in the weather, but the clouds are still full of rain. Still, probably best not to come for a visit, will let you know if the weather changes. _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Your friend, _ _   
_ _   
_ __ Hawke

 

_ Hawke, _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Are you writing in code? You know no one reads my mail, right? I'm a Brother, not a prisoner. Tell me if there's any change in the "weather." If the winds turn deadly, I want to be there to do what I can. _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Yours, _ _   
_ _   
_ __ Sebastian

 

_ Choir-boy, _ _   
_ _   
_ _ I appreciate you actually listening to what I said and staying away. We're not sure what's going on with Blondie, but whatever it is it's bringing out a side of him that you don't know about yet. One that he wouldn't want you to know about unless he was awake to try to explain it, if at all. Hawke and I have got the situation under control, if it changes we'll let you know. _ _   
_ _   
_ _ The fields are still fertile and far as I can tell the crops are growing just fine, or whatever the code is that you and Hawke are using. I know that's what you're more worried about anyway. _ _   
_ _   
_ __ Varric

 

_ Varric, _ _   
_ _   
_ _ You presume an awful lot about my intentions. Anders is my friend, and as much as I want to protect his child, I would be devastated if that came at the cost of his life. I won't come until he's well again, but know that that's more out of respect toward Anders than obedience to you. _ _   
_ _   
_ __ Sebastian

 

_ Sebastian, _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Varric showed me the last letter. He's pretty protective of Anders, but his heart's in the right place. Don't hold it against him. _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Come see Anders. Whether or not he would want you to, you need to. I know you care about him, and this is something he won't be able to hide forever. Is it the best time? Probably not. But if something doesn't change soon, it won't matter what he wants anymore. _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Meet me at the clinic tonight. You can take part of my watch. _ _   
_ _   
_ __ Hawke

 

That night, Sebastian forewent his usual armor in lieu of a simple dark hooded cloak. Even knowing that he was less likely to meet trouble incognito didn't help make him feel less vulnerable without his armor. The moon was bright over the harbor and the people of Darktown still had embers in their own fires that lit his way through Darktown, thankful that he knew the way without the lanterns to guide him. He knocked twice on the clinic doors, then pulled out a dagger with trembling hands and slipped it between the doors, lifting the lock from the outside to let himself in.   
  
"Hawke?" he called, making sure that the clinic door was shut behind him. When he turned back around, the first thing he saw was the point of the greatsword aimed at his chest. Thankfully, Hawke recognized him and lowered his sword, before the warrior ended up with two patients to care for.   
  
"Oh, good. Glad it's you, Sebastian," he said. Sebastian was already ill at ease, but something about Hawke's demeanor set off alarm bells. Ordinarily, the warrior was all smiles and easy, casual jokes, but now he seemed subdued and serious.   
  
"Of course, you asked me to come," Sebastian said. "Is he any worse?" He hoped that he hadn't been brought here to administer last rites.   
  
"Well, that's a complicated answer," Hawke said, scratching at his beard. "The fever finally broke last night, so as far as the physical illness goes he's much better, but... The rest you probably should see for yourself."   
  
"Now I know I'm not going to like this," Sebastian said warily. Hawke moved aside and let Sebastian through the partition to the area that Anders called his personal quarters. Sebastian had only been back here once or twice, out of respect for Anders' privacy, to fetch him a book or a fresh ink pot. It was probably once a store room, for whatever the clinic used to be before it sat empty waiting for Anders to carve out his place in it, with little more than a cot for Anders to sleep on and a small chest with Anders' belongings.

There was no moonlight that made it into the room, and usually Sebastian had to bring a candle with him when he entered. But there was no need for a candle this time. What Sebastian saw when he looked at Anders' cot stopped him dead in his tracks.   
  
Anders' eyelids were closed, but beneath them his eyes were alight with a shining blue light that seemed to move with a life of its own, like the restless eye movements of deep sleep. His flesh crawled with the same living blue light, jagged lightning bolts across his skin. As the light approached Anders' stomach, it softened and thrummed with energy like it was glowing through his very veins instead of tearing his body apart, spiderwebs of light wrapped protectively around his stomach. Fear and dread reached its icy fingers into Sebastian's chest and gripped his heart.   
  
"What is this?" Sebastian asked, whirling on Hawke. "What's - what happened to him, Hawke?" he demanded. Hawke looked past Sebastian, at Anders lying supine. Sebastian kept his gaze trained on the warrior, so that he could avoid the sight.   
  
"That's... not Anders," Hawke said hesitantly. Sebastian recoiled.   
  
"A  _ demon _ ?" he whispered, as though speaking too loudly would bring it forth. Hawke sighed and scratched at his neck before gesturing benignly with one hand.   
  
"Justice is a spirit, not a demon. It's... Their relationship is a little complicated. Anders can explain it better if- ...when he wakes up."   
  
" _ Try _ , Hawke," Sebastian said, crossing his arms. "For my sake. Explain what it  _ is _ , then, if not possession."   
  
"It's not really possession, it's. A spirit, living in his body," Hawke insisted.   
  
"A possession," Sebastian said.   
  
"Anyway, it's not  _ hurting _ him. I think Justice is trying to protect him," Hawke mused. "Varric and I have been trying to wake him up for days now, and... I thought, if he can hear us he's probably getting sick of our voices, and out of everyone I could ask he would probably appreciate me going to  _ you _ for help before I ask if Merrill has any ideas. I know how much you care about him-"   
  
"Do you?" Sebastian asked, finally letting his gaze go back to the glowing figure on the cot and feeling a wave of disgust and pity wash over him. "Because I don't- I don't know how much I can care for something like this."   
  
"You haven't left," Hawke pointed out, with a hint of his usual humor.   
  
"I  _ should _ ," Sebastian replied angrily. "Whatever's happened to him, this spirit or demon or whatever it is at least seems to have reached a standstill, maybe there is still a way to bring him back. But if there is, then the only hope for saving him is a Templar-"   
  
"That's  _ not _ an option," Hawke interrupted, his voice dropping to a low, aggressive growl. The sound of the normally friendly and easygoing man sounding so threatening cut off Sebastian's thoughts mid-sentence, and his blue eyes widened. For the first time, he found himself actually scared of the warrior. "I brought you here because I trusted you to help him, not kill him, Sebastian," Hawke said.   
  
"What did you expect me to do?" Sebastian asked, throwing his hands up in frustration. " _ Exorcise him? _ I don't have that kind of power."   
  
"Talk to him," Hawke said. "Pray for him. Whatever, I don't know. Just bring him back." The warrior turned to leave. "I'm going to watch the door."   
  
And then Sebastian was alone.   
  
Well, not completely alone. Sebastian would not be fooled by whatever demon or spirit was possessing Anders. Now that he was watching him carefully, as if at any moment Anders would twist into an abomination and rise up from the cot to attack him, he noticed how the glow emanating from Anders' body looked harsh on first glance but it also resembled the magic that Sebastian had seen Anders use so many times in the clinic.   
  
Eerily so.   
  
Sebastian had heard the term "spirit healer" before, but only knew that they were even more impressively skilled mages who drew additional power from spirits of the fade, and that their gifts were for healing and compassionate arts. He had no perception to know if Anders was one of these elite healers, or if Anders' power was typical of all mages. Magic was still as foreign to him as the Qun, even with his acquaintance with Hawke's merry band of apostates and degenerates.   
  
Could Hawke have been  _ right? _   
  
Morbid curiosity compelled him closer, and he sat down on the low stool next to the cot almost automatically. Up close, Anders' pale skin was even paler in the bright blue light dancing across his features, every highlight and hollow of his features nearly caricatured from his nose and his sharp cheekbones to his long eyelashes.   
  
"Anders?" Sebastian called. The light continued to shift and dance across Anders' features, but Sebastian noticed no sign of stirring. His eye was drawn to the swell of Anders' stomach, all the more prominent because he was lying on his back. The light was softer there, less sharp and jagged, like it knew the import of the child within. It throbbed off-tempo with the arcs of lightning that danced across the rest of Anders' skin, fluttering like a tiny, rapid heartbeat, and Sebastian's breath caught in his chest when he realized what that might be. He wondered, if he just nudged Anders' shirt up and looked closely enough, if the baby would be silhouetted inside Anders' stomach. Like candling a hen's egg. He wanted to touch, to see if he could feel the baby moving, but the idea of touching Anders without his permission, even if the mage was unconscious, left a sour taste in his mouth. His hands gripped his breeches, but stayed in his lap.   
  
He still felt like there was nothing he could do to help, still didn't want to be here. This was unholy, unnatural. This was exactly the kind of thing that the templars were trained to deal with, that the order was meant to safeguard against in the first place.   
  
But as much as he wanted to just get up and walk out, come back with a Templar (or two, or ten), as much as he did not sign up for this, Hawke's threat still rang clearly in his ears, and he didn't want to see the other man hurt or imprisoned for protecting an abomination.   
  
Sebastian scooted the stool close enough that he could lean forward and fold his hands atop the cot. He closed his eyes and bowed his head, and in a quiet voice began to sing.   
  
"For she who trusts in the Maker, fire is her water. As the moth sees light and goes toward flame, she should see fire..."

* * *

Anders had walked the Fade every night of his life, had seen it during his Harrowing and drew from its near-infinite power.   
  
But since merging with Justice, he rarely walked the Fade in his dreams anymore. He hated the feeling of being a passenger in his own body, so he gave Justice free reign when he dreamed because that must be how Justice felt in the living world. Only twice had he been in the Fade alone since merging with Justice: once to be told of the child that would be conceived upon him, and once for the actual conceiving. But he was so exhausted when he laid down that his guard was down, and he fell too quickly into deep sleep. When the Fade around him shifted to the familiar surroundings of his clinic, he relaxed. This clinic was cleaner, a mix between the clinic in Darktown where he'd made his own life as a man free from both the Circle and the Wardens, and the familiar infirmary at Vigil's Keep where Warden-Commander Tabris had spared him and given him a new lease on life. He explored the familiar differences with curiosity, the fortified stone walls of the Keep and the donated cots and packed earth floor of the clinic. He didn't know who he'd expect to come through the door more, Hawke or Warden-Commander Tabris.   
  
"Anders."   
  
He didn't expect to hear a voice at all, of course, so hearing his name sent a bolt through him. He very nearly tried to startle awake, thinking the voice coming from outside his dream, until he saw the archer standing there with a smile that warmed Anders head to toe.   
  
"Shh," the comforting Starkhaven brogue soothed. "There's no hurry. Rest a while, Anders." Anders knew he should protest, should be suspicious of how the figment of his imagination had known he was about to wake. But his protests felt fuzzy, and contentment sank into his bones.   
  
Anyway, Justice would likely take control any minute now. What was the harm in having a normal dream for a little while?

* * *

Hawke didn't return to relieve Sebastian until almost dawn, but the archer hardly noticed, bent as he was deep in prayer over Anders.   
  
"Sebastian?" Hawke called. His heart sank when he saw that nothing had changed from when he left them last. "...It was worth a shot," he muttered. "Come on, Sebastian, they're going to start wondering where you are at the Chantry."   
  
"No, I know he's listening," Sebastian said insistently, his quiet voice muffled by his folded hands. Hawke wasn't sure if Sebastian meant "he" as in Anders or "He" as in the Maker. "I can reach him, just...have a little faith, Hawke. Please." Hawke looked between Sebastian and Anders, and wondered if it was his imagination or if the harsh glow of Justice had dimmed. He leaned against the wall next to the door, crossed his arms over his chest, and watched. There had been a moment that he'd been afraid he'd made a big mistake, that this really was going to be the hard line for Sebastian, and Hawke would have to defend Anders from Templars. Or worse, from Sebastian himself. He'd been guarding the only entrance to the clinic, but if Sebastian had wanted to turn around and leave Hawke would have let him pass without a fight if he swore to keep Anders' secret.

Seeing Sebastian bent over Anders' side in prayer, it only just occurred to him how easy it would have been for the rogue to put Anders down and slip out, and his heart sank with grief at the thought. He cared for all of his friends, but there was something about Anders - even as early as their very first meeting - that reminded Hawke of his father. It was a resemblance that Bethany had seen, too, one that made him anxious to help the mage in any way he could.

He just hoped this decision wouldn't do more harm than good.

"Blessed Andraste, Bride of our Maker," he heard Sebastian murmur. "Shelter our friend along the dark and hazardous path he treads, and guide him home by your Light..."

* * *

"Do you hear that?" Anders asked. The fade shifted and reformed around him, a few more traces of Anders' Darktown clinic reforming into the nostalgic Warden infirmary.   
  
"Hear what?" Sebastian asked innocently. "I hear nothing but us, my dear."   
  
The whispers solidified into a voice that Anders felt more than heard. It wrapped around a soft place just below his navel and  _ tugged _ , sweetly.  _ Your child needs you. _

"Child?" he repeated, brow furrowing. "I don't have a child." He looked down at his stomach (flat, of course) and saw soft cracks of blue light for a second. But the illusion disappeared, and Anders rested a leather-gloved hand on his stomach, just above the familiar brown leather belt.

When had his clothes turned into his old Warden armor?

"What nonsense you speak," Fade Sebastian said indulgently, drawing his attention away from the insistent whispering. "Of course you don't have a child. You're hearing things, love."

_ Anders _ , the voice called. It was familiar to him, he felt in his heart that he knew it, but his head felt foggy and sluggish and he couldn't identify it.   
  
"Anders?" the figment called. Suddenly, Anders' mind cleared as if a lightning bolt had struck and chased away the darkness and the fog. His eyes widened.   
  
"You're not... You're not him," he said, taking a step back.   
  
"I thought you'd realized that, by now," the figment said placatingly. "But I don't have to be the real Sebastian to give you what you want." Anders felt tempted to relax again.   
  
_ I need you, Anders. Your child is destined to face many trials in her life, don't make this... make coming into the world alone one of them. _   
  
Anders felt like he'd been splashed with cold water. He turned on the figment with a glare.   
  
"How long have I been here?" he asked.   
  
"You were exhausted," the figment deflected. "You must still be, poor lamb," it cooed with Sebastian's voice, but the more that the real thing came to him the more hollow this fake sounded. "Come rest some more. There'll be no more voices..." It reached out to touch him, and he recoiled like he'd been burnt.   
  
_ Please, Anders. _ Anders shook his head, trying to clear it. Sebastian's voice came to him clearly now, and he felt the curled vowels gently pull at his heart, at his mind.   
  
_ Come back to us - to me. _ The words were like a rope thrown to a man overboard. Like a candle light in the darkest night.   
  
_ I can't raise her without you. _ Resolve flooded through him like a baptism.   
  
"You're not real," Anders said accusingly. "You're not even a figment of my imagination."   
  
"I can be," Fade-Sebastian promised. Anders' nose wrinkled in disgust. "I can be anything you want, Anders." He staggered back before it could touch him, disgusted with himself for letting it get its hooks in him as deeply as it had. How had he not noticed the shade of blackish-purple around this Sebastian's striking blue eyes? "Don't you want to go back to when things were easier? Just stop fighting for a while... Ignore your pesky...  _ passengers, _ for a little while."

Anders closed his eyes. He had been running, fighting for so long, the chance to rest sounded like a gift. He drew in a deep breath. When he opened his eyes, his warden uniform was gone, replaced by his usual robes. The Fade shifted around him, bending to his will, and took the form of his humble Darktown clinic. Fade-Sebastian looked around at the change, taking a step away from him.

"Get away, demon," Anders said, his voice low and measured. The demon stopped, looking back to him.   
  
"What a shame," it sighed, shaking its head. In an instant, Sebastian's shape melted away to reveal a sloth demon, its one glowing purple eye peering at him. "Mealtime's over, I suppose."   
  
The demon lunged. Anders put his hands up instinctively to block the strike. Instead of magic pouring forth from his hands, a glowing silver barrier easily repelled the demon's clumsy lunge. Anders felt warmth and comfort wash over him, genuine this time, as the familiar blue light crackled through his skin. He felt Justice surge into him, through him, felt the spirit's righteous anger and felt... safe. The demon growled and fell back, and Anders took in the shape of the barrier that had repulsed it. It wasn't a barrier spell, wasn't even magic at all.

It was a  _ tower shield. _

"Justice?" he asked. For what felt like so long, he'd been part of Justice and Justice had been part of him. Since they merged, Justice had adapted to a mage's fighting. Even in the Fade, he had manifested a staff. But when Anders had first met him, the spirit had been a warrior.

_ FEAR NOT, _ Justice said. Anders felt his heart jump into his throat; he heard Justice's words without thinking them himself.

"I don't understand," he said. "Where have you  _ been? _ "

_ PREVENTING AN OUTCOME EVEN MORE UNJUST. _ The sloth demon charged again and Anders felt his control slip, letting Justice take over. Justice parried the demon with the shield again, raising his other hand which glowed righteously white, swinging a spectral sword. The demon screamed and recoiled, and suddenly the sword and shield coalesced together into the familiar shape of Freedom's Call.

* * *

The jagged cracks of light flickered and began to fade from Anders' skin, leaving the room without light. Hawke pushed himself from the wall to get a closer look. Sebastian saw the glow fade from behind his eyelids and opened his eyes. He reached out to put a hand on Anders' brow, his own furrowed with worry.

"...Anders?" he called, finally. The mage's eyes still darted restlessly beneath his eyelids, his breath quickening and peppered with breathy, staccato whimpers. Sebastian looked over his shoulder at Hawke.   
  
"Maker's balls," Hawke swore. "Watch over him. I'm going to get Varric." And then the warrior was gone. Hope, weak and restrained, unfurled in Sebastian's chest as he watched Anders struggle to wake. His hand drifted to the dagger he had brought with him for defense, anxious but ready if this change wasn't for the better.   
  
A few minutes later, Anders' tensed muscles relaxed and he lay eerily still for a long moment, one final flicker of blue behind his eyelids and at the tips of his fingers. Sebastian counted the seconds in near-total darkness, watching Anders closely for any hope or movement.   
  
Finally, Anders' brow furrowed and he let out a quiet groan that sounded pained but thankfully, wholly human.   
  
"Praise Andraste," Sebastian breathed, feeling the tension loosen in his chest, freeing his lungs to breathe again.   
  
Anders flinched away from the sound of Sebastian's voice, eyes snapping open as he came back to himself and took stock of his surroundings. His back was killing him, and it felt like the weight of the child inside him was slowly breaking his spine. One hand settled on his stomach, rubbing gently to try to coax the baby into moving. He sighed in relief when he felt an answering pressure against his hand.   
  
"Andraste's knickers," he swore softly, running the hand not on his stomach through his hair, instead.   
  
"Are you alright?" Sebastian asked. Anders sucked in a breath and started to try to struggle upright against the immovable weight of his stomach. Sebastian offered him a hand and he took it, finally looking at him. Any snarky response he was about to give died on his tongue as he summoned a ball of light to float harmlessly near his head, giving him light to see the disheveled state Sebastian was in. His normally neat chestnut brown hair was mussed like he'd been running his hands through it in concern, and his blue eyes were watching Anders with earnest concern.   
  
"I take it that that turned out to be more than a quick nap," Anders said. He made a face at the sour, parched taste in his mouth.   
  
"Maker, Anders," Sebastian said, passing him a flask of water. Anders gratefully took a drink that quickly turned into downing the whole flask. "It's been five days. Are you sure that you -  _ both _ of you are alright?" Anders noticed the way that Sebastian's worried gaze flicked down to his stomach. Feeling bold, he took the hand that had handed him the flask and pressed gently it to the side of his belly. The baby responded almost instantly, pressing out against Sebastian's touch, and the archer gasped. He rubbed his thumb back and forth, sweet and soothing.   
  
"That's her?" he asked.   
  
"Mm-hm. She must know your voice now. She heard you calling to me." The flush that came to Sebastian's cheekbones surprised Anders, and he gave Sebastian a reassuring smile.   
  
"Don't be embarrassed," he said, and leaned in flirtatiously (he could feel Justice rolling his eyes). Sebastian hesitated but didn't move back, unwilling to move his hand from the excited somersaults that he could feel beneath Anders' skin.   
  
"Why's that?" he asked.   
  
"I heard you too," Anders said. "And if I hadn't, I wouldn't be here right now. So thank you." Sebastian stayed put, staring at him with surprise, not smugness, not evangelical insufferability. The look sent a warm, dangerous feeling through Anders, something that he hesitantly wanted to call hope. Anders left Sebastian's hand on his stomach and reached up to cup Sebastian's cheek (oh, Maker bless his heart, he was even a little bristly from not having shaved, his chin hairs even more coppery red than his hair). As he leaned in, he watched Sebastian from beneath his lashes, watched those icy blue eyes flutter closed, as the chantry boy leaned in unconsciously. 

The kiss was better than Anders expected, honestly. Even though he was the one who initiated it, he soon found himself being kissed with an almost religious fervor.

Sebastian's lips were smooth and soft against his own chapped ones, but the way he kissed was firm and devouring and far from the inexperienced fumbling that Anders had expected. It was intoxicating, the way Sebastian responded when Anders refused to cede ground, when he pushed back. It felt like a dozen stars exploded around them, and dimly Anders realized that this was his first kiss in far, far too long.   
  
"Oh," a familiar baritone said. Anders and Sebastian broke apart like guilty teenagers and glanced toward the door of the room. Hawke stood there wearing a mischievous smirk, delight sparkling in his golden-brown eyes. "See, Varric, like I was saying: they're totally fine."   
  
"Looks like a little bit more than fine to me," Varric noted with a smirk. The blush that had been contained to Sebastian's cheekbones spread all the way to his ears and down his neck. Anders keenly felt the loss when Sebastian pulled his warm hand back from Anders' stomach, and stood up.   
  
"I-I'm sorry, I have to get back to the Chantry," he stammered, then beat such a hasty retreat that even Anders thought it was a little bit funny.   
  
Varric and Hawke both started laughing.   
  
"Glad to see you're feeling better, Blondie," Varric said, a storyteller's delight in his eyes. Anders groaned, remembering the earlier conversation he'd had with the dwarf. He certainly looked like he'd found the ending to his story.   
  
"I'm sorry we interrupted your romantic moment," Hawke said, though he was still grinning his shitty little smug grin. The warrior sat down next to Anders when the mage swung his legs over the side of the cot and Anders sighed wearily, leaning his head on his friend's shoulder (the armor had sharper edges than he would have liked, but the cool metal felt good against his blushing cheeks).   
  
"If it's any consolation, if I'm worth anything as a storyteller I can guarantee that that? You've got a pretty good chance of getting that to happen again." Anders covered his face with his hands to hide the pleased expression on his face.   
  
"Shut up, both of you are terrible," he complained. "...Thank you for helping me. It can't have been easy for you."   
  
"Probably easier than if you'd been awake to comment on our bedside manner," Hawke admitted.   
  
"And now you're here to keep me in bed," Anders said dryly, seeing where their concern was headed.   
  
"You bet," Varric replied. "We're also going to get food in you, but that can wait until a little later if you want." Anders held up his hands in surrender.   
  
"Seeing as I was apparently unconscious for nearly a full week," he said, "a few extra hours to recuperate wouldn't be amiss. If you're here to insist, then I'll indulge you. For today," he added. "Tomorrow I'm opening the clinic back up." 

  
"Fair enough," Hawke said diplomatically. The warrior's big hands settled on his shoulders and gently started to soothe the tension from them, and Anders relaxed slowly, in increments. He knew he really should get up and get back to work, but taking time to ground himself back in his own skin again couldn't hurt. Even Justice couldn't argue with that logic, as much as he despised distractions in any form.

* * *

"And then we- Seeker?" The Seeker had been turned away from Varric since he had started describing the kiss, and Varric paused to make sure she was still listening. "May I remind you  _ you're _ the one who brought me here because you wanted to hear Hawke's story so bad. If you're not gonna pay attention, you could at least let me go while you're at it."   
  
"I cannot believe it..." she pulled her hands in front of her, making a gesture that Varric couldn't see. "They actually  _ kissed _ ?" She regained control of herself quickly, posture straightening as she turned back to Varric. "I mean... that hardly seems the time." Varric eyed her, one eyebrow raising.   
  
"Yeah, it's pretty romantic, huh Seeker?" he probed obviously, checking for dirt under his fingernails. She fixed him with a glare as sharp as the dagger she'd put through his Tale.   
  
"What happened next?" she demanded.   
  
"Eh, the usual. Cards, chit-chat, boring stuff. Promise I'm not skipping anything important"   
  
"Ugh, fine," the Seeker said. "Go ahead."


	8. Few Against the Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke just wants his friends to get along.  
> Approval seesaws are in full swing.

It was a few weeks after the incident with Justice when Hawke realized just how huge Anders was getting. Maybe it was because the construction projects around the Amell estate were finally winding down and Hawke was free to pick up Sebastian's slack helping Anders in the clinic (the Chantry brother had been sequestered since he'd run away from Anders, and when Hawke had tried to visit him he had been rebuffed by a well-meaning sister), but the warrior took longer to notice Anders' rapidly growing discomfort (and waistline) than he liked to think he would have normally.   
  
On the other hand, it probably saved Future Garrett from putting his foot in it by making a tactless remark about Anders' size, so You're welcome, Future Garrett.   
  
Still, the fact remained that Anders had to be getting close to his due date, and Hawke hadn't seen him making any kind of preparations.   
  
Given that Hawke had been a naive young 5-year-old last time he'd really been around a baby (or babies), Hawke had no idea what Anders needed. But whatever it was he was determined to make sure that the mage had it. So he decided to broach the subject with the one person he knew who was an unquestioned authority on the subject.   
  
"Mother, I have a question for you."   
  
Well, she had raised two troublemakers and Bethany.   
  
"What is it, dear?" Leandra asked.   
  
"Is it, you know, if someone's...expecting... is there something I could be doing, to help-" Leandra gasped.   
  
" _ Garrett Hawke _ ," she scolded. "You didn't get some poor girl pregnant-"   
  
"Maker, no!" Hawke backpedaled, holding his hands up defensively. "I just-" he sighed, figuring if there was anyone he ought to just fess up to it was his mother. "It's Anders."   
  
"Anders?" Leandra repeated, as if repeating the name would bring to mind just which of her son's many new friends he was talking about. "The healer? Do you know the mother?"   
  
"No. Well, yes, I do- I mean Anders is pregnant," Hawke explained.   
  
"Anders is- We are talking about the same Anders, aren't we? The male Grey Warden?"   
  
"It sounds crazy, I know."   
  
"It sounds more than crazy, darling, it sounds impossible."   
  
"Well, impossible or not, it's definitely real," Hawke said. "I feel bad. You know, he heals the sick for free and I don't know if he even has a place for the baby to sleep, or means to afford clothes." Garrett leaned against the fireplace mantel and stared into the raked coals.   
  
"My dear, big-hearted boy," Leandra said fondly, crossing the room to touch him gently, smoothing her hand over his back. "You are so much like your father... You know, when I was pregnant with you I think the village that we stayed in could tell that we were first-time parents, and some of the women had mercy on me and gave me some little shirts and diapers that their own children had outgrown. Maybe you could approach some of Anders' patients..."   
  
"He'd never tell me any of his patients' names," Garrett said, then stopped and lifted his head. "But maybe I don't have to know their names. You're a genius, Mother!" He went to his room and came clanking out a few minutes later in his armor.   
  
"Where are you going?" Leandra asked, watching with amusement as Hawke slung his greatsword over his shoulder and headed for the door.   
  
"Lowtown," Garrett answered with all the excitement of a pup chasing after a new scent. "Don't wait up." He moved closer to the door, reached out to open it, then turned back and crossed the room in a few great strides, bending down to give Leandra a loving kiss on the cheek. She smiled warmly, cupping his bearded cheek in her hand.   
  
"Love you Mother," he said.   
  
"I love you too." He beamed at her and then swept out the door, leaving Leandra in the hall of the mansion that was too big for two.   
  
"You know," she mused aloud to the empty air, "Perhaps I can find some old baby things around here someplace. I should have a look."   
  
The first place Hawke went was Lirene's. The woman had thawed considerably ever since Hawke had proven himself a trustworthy friend to Anders, though she still greeted him with a formal "Serah Hawke, to what do I owe the pleasure?"   
  
"Did you know," Hawke started conversationally. "That our mutual friend is expecting a child?" Lirene gave him a look that was almost amused, as she crossed her arms and shifted her weight to one side.   
  
"I think by now everyone with eyes has noticed that," she said lightly, raising an eyebrow at him.   
  
"Well, I have an idea and I was hoping that I could enlist your help. I'm trying to put together a little surprise party to congratulate him. If you could help by passing along word to any of his patients - especially ones with children.  _ Especially _ babies he might have helped deliver?" Her amicable attitude chilled a little.   
  
"Serah, none of these people have been as fortunate as you - they have nothing to give."   
  
"They have advice," Hawke said. "The healer was raised in a Circle, he may be able to deliver babies but I don't think he has the slightest idea how to raise one." She made a face like she was considering his point.   
  
"Alright," she said finally. "When and where?"   
  
"The easiest place I think would be the clinic," Hawke said. "Everyone will feel comfortable there. Maybe in a couple of days?" he suggested. "I've been helping him in the clinic, so I'll be there already."   
  
"I'll tell a few people," Lirene said.   
  
"Just before nightfall. That's about when I've been able to convince him to extinguish the lanterns, when it's not busy. I'll meet everyone outside just so he's not taken by surprise." He leaned across the counter and kissed next to her cheek in excitement. "Thank you for helping with this, I owe you." She smiled wryly.   
  
"If it goes well, feel free to consider us even," she said. "I'm glad the healer has a friend like you."

"He puts up with me somehow," Hawke joked. On his way out of the shop, he stopped and threw a handful of gold pieces into the donation chest.   
  
The next place Hawke found himself was the Hanged Man. Specifically, the lavish but homey rooms upstairs that belonged to his good friend-   
  
"Varric!" he exclaimed, arms wide open. Varric looked up from the papers scattered across his table, and raised his mug to his friend.   
  
"Hawke, you beautiful bastard, you're just in time. How would you have described that thug the other day? Porcine? Grotesque? Or just big, mean, and ugly?"   
  
"Ooh, 'Porcine,' breaking out the ten-gold words now are we?"   
  
"Paints a pretty good picture, though, doesn't it? In all its squinty-eyed, squat-nosed glory." Varric chuckled to himself and scribbled something onto the paper. Hawke swaggered in and plopped himself down in one of the stiff wooden chairs that Varric had requisitioned from downstairs for when he held court (that was the best way Hawke could describe it, the way Varric's words somehow managed to hold his listeners in thrall).   
  
"Varric, I have an idea."   
  
"Oh no," Varric said, setting his quill aside after wiping the nib clean. "This I have to hear."   
  
"You've noticed how big Anders is getting, right?"   
  
"Who hasn't? By the looks of him, Blondie Jr. is gonna pop out any day now."   
  
"Exactly," Hawke said. "But he doesn't have a single thing ready for the baby."   
  
"Okay, so what's your idea?" Varric asked, leaning back in his chair and taking a long sip from his mug (whatever he was drinking smelled dark, earthy and a little fruity, and the only reason Hawke noticed the smell was because it was so different from the stale piss smell of the usual tavern ale - and its patrons).   
  
"Well, now that I think of it, it's less of an idea and more of a plan. But anyway. You and I know nothing about babies. Fenris probably knows nothing about babies, Isabela definitely knows nothing about babies. So, who does know things about babies?"   
  
"Uh... Mothers?" Varric guessed.   
  
"Mothers!" Hawke confirmed. "Since we can't exactly help Anders with advice ourselves, I asked Lirene for some help reaching out to some of the refugees who Anders has helped. But, I was also thinking about having all our friends come too. You know, to show our support for Anders too." Hawke grinned. "So, what do you think?" he asked. Varric groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose.   
  
"Remember back when, months and months and months ago, you said 'Hey Varric, you're incredibly smart and handsome, what do you think of my idea to get Choir-boy to help Blondie out in the clinic?'"   
  
"I never asked your opinion on that idea."   
  
"Well, Hawke," Varric said, barreling ahead anyway, "maybe you should have. But I can safely say that this plan has just about the same chances of ending well." Hawke leaned back and crossed his arms over his chestplate.   
  
"Fine, then what would you do different?" he asked pointedly.   
  
"For starters, I probably wouldn't let Rivaini anywhere near children," Varric said. "But also, think about it. I know you. I know you're probably already thinking of all sorts of stuff you can buy for Blondie and Blondie Jr. And how do you think Blondie's patients are gonna feel when you start showering him with gifts?" Hawke winced. Then he had an idea.   
  
"So what you're saying is to have two parties!"   
  
"No, that's no-"   
  
"It's perfect! The second one could be at the estate, there is that secret passage from Darktown..." Varric sighed, planting his thumb against his temple and rubbing two fingers across his forehead. "You're going to come, right?" Hawke asked charmingly.   
  
"Are you kidding? Wouldn't miss this disaster for the world."   
  
"Oh ha ha," Hawke said dryly. "Everything will be fine, you'll see."   
  
"Well, you know there  _ is _ somebody who would be happy to help you pick some things out for Blondie and his kid. And, as an added bonus, she might actually be among the few of us who do know how not to break a baby," Varric said, gesturing with his mug. Hawke blushed, which made Varric grin harder.   
  
"You think I should ask her?" he asked.   
  
"I think she always loves spending time alone with you," Varric replied, hiding a shit-eating grin behind his mug as he tilted it up to take a sip. "No matter what you're doing."   
  
"Stop, you're the worst," Hawke said, but there was a smile on his face nonetheless.   
  
"You know you love me," Varric countered, setting his mug back down and folding his hands. Hawke got up and headed for the door.   
  
"What?" Varric called, smirking. "Not going to let me buy you a drink?"   
  
"Rain check!" Hawke called back over his shoulder. "I've got a lot of stops to make today!" As he headed for the door, he saw Isabela at her usual spot at the bar and sauntered over, leaning to one side against the bar.   
  
"Heard you talking with Varric, sweet thing," she said, before he could get a word out. "I don't do babies." She must have seen something funny in the way that Hawke's face fell, because she chuckled and patted his arm. "Don't worry, I'll send something pretty," she said. "Just because I don't like babies doesn't mean I don't have a soft spot for our favorite healer." Hawke sighed in defeat.   
  
"Thanks, Isabela," he said.   
  
"I haven't done anything yet," she said. "But I do think you should go talk to Kitten about it, she'd be happy to see you."   
  
"Not you too!" Hawke groaned. She laughed, bright and cheerful.   
  
"I'm just saying, you'd be doing us all a favor if you'd just man up and kiss her," Isabela said.   
  
"I'm leaving!" Hawke called. "Barkeep, cut this woman off, she's had enough."   
  
"Don't play coy, sweet thing, ignorance doesn't become you!"   
  
"Bye, Isabela! Afraid I can't hear you over the sound of me going somewhere else!" The sound of her laughter followed him out of the tavern and back into the early morning sunshine, as he turned his steps next to Hightown.   
  
The "somewhere else" that he ended up was the Viscount's Keep.   
  
"Greetings and salutations, my dear friend and favorite guardswoman," he said cheerfully, as he rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs and into Aveline's office. She looked up from the papers spread across her desk and sighed.   
  
"What do you need, Hawke?" she asked.   
  
"Now what makes you think I only come to see you if I need something, Aveline? You wound me."   
  
"Now I know you need something," she said, though there was a rare smile in her tone instead of any condemnation. She gestured to the lone chair on the other side of her desk, and he took a seat, perching on the edge of it.   
  
"I'm putting together a party for Anders. Technically two parties, though they're on the same night so I'm not actually sure if that counts as two separate parties or not."   
  
"For Anders," Aveline repeated, then her eyes went wide. "Did the baby come?"   
  
"No!" Hawke said. "Not yet. It would be a party for the baby, then, wouldn't it?"   
  
"Then...what is this for?"   
  
"For him. To make sure he knows that he has support, that he doesn't have to feel like he's doing this on his own. It takes a village to raise a child, and we're going to be his village."   
  
"You know, Hawke, this is actually very thoughtful of you," Aveline said.   
  
"Try not to sound so shocked," Hawke joked.   
  
"Alright," she said. "When were you thinking?"   
  
"Well, in a couple days?" Hawke said sheepishly. "I'm hoping to get some of the women Anders has helped to come and give him advice and support too. But then after that, I was going to bring him back to the estate, maybe? Where we could all congratulate him, too."   
  
"I'll have to check the guard schedule," Aveline said thoughtfully. "But I'll see what I can do." Hawke beamed.   
  
"Excellent!" he said.   
  
"Should I bring a gift?" Aveline asked, a note of hesitation in her voice.   
  
"If you think of something, that would be great," Hawke said. "But don't worry about it too much, Anders will appreciate you just being there." She nodded decisively.   
  
"Alright," she said. "Now if there was nothing else, I do have work to do if I want to take off that night."   
  
"You're beautiful," Garrett said, with his most charming smile. "Thank you, Aveline."   
  
"You can thank me by clearing out of my office," she said, smiling fondly nonetheless.   
  
"It's like you want me gone or something," Hawke said. "Alright, I'll leave you be. Don't have too much fun."   
  
"I'll try my best." He blew her a lighthearted kiss, which she rolled her eyes at and reached up to "catch" anyway.   
  
The next place Hawke headed was the ass end of Hightown, where he paced outside the house for a moment before slipping inside. He jumped, a hand on the hilt of his greatsword, when he thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, but it was just the desiccated skeleton of a slaver greeting him like a grim grinning butler.   
  
"You know, Fenris, I know that you're fond of him, but your steward really seems to be lying down on the job," he quipped, clanking his way into the foyer. Fenris was leaning against the banister to the upstairs, watching him carefully. Hawke noticed that the elf's greatsword was on his back, and was glad that he'd thought to call out before getting too far inside.   
  
"He makes up for his laziness by deterring would-be robbers at the door," the elf quipped back. "I'm surprised you're not in Darktown helping that mage," he added, before Hawke could get a word out. There was curiosity under the barely-hidden ire. "Has he finally dropped his spawn?"   
  
"No, he's not due yet," Hawke said, and already he saw a downturn at the corner of Fenris' mouth as they took their usual seats next to the fireplace in Fenris' room.   
  
"No good has ever come from this kind of magic, Hawke," he warned.   
  
"I'll be sure to tell Mother that mages aren't fit to be fathers, then," Hawke said. Fenris' eyes widened.   
  
"That's not-"   
  
"It is what you said," Hawke said stubbornly. "And I do understand where you're coming from. But it doesn't matter where the baby comes from, she hasn't done anything wrong. And Anders is going to need our help protecting and teaching and raising her." Fenris scowled, and raised a bottle to his lips to take a long, slow gulp.   
  
"The mage wants my help raising his child as little as I wish to have any part in it," he said. Hawke sighed. It was, at least, more than he'd hoped for already. He hadn't been thrown out yet, for one. Fenris must have started in an unusually good mood.   
  
"I'm going to host a party at my estate a couple nights from now, for Anders. Will you come?"   
  
"He won't enjoy that," Fenris said plainly, and Hawke wasn't clear whether he meant Fenris attending the party or the idea of a party at all. "I will think on it. At your estate, you said?"   
  
"That's right."   
  
"Then I will be there if I decide to attend."   
  
"That's all I have any right to ask of you, Fenris."   
  
"There is much that you can ask of me, Hawke, that I would freely give. But this I must consider."   
  
"I understand," Hawke said. Outside, the Chantry bells began to chime the afternoon hour, and Hawke jumped up, remembering all he had yet to do.   
  
"Shit," he swore. He had to get going if he hoped to try and catch Sebastian. Before he left he turned big brown puppy eyes on Fenris. "A little birdie tells me Hightown's been having problems with bandits impersonating city guards. How would you like to come with me tomorrow night to impersonate a couple of landed nobles and put them in their place?"   
  
"Hmph," Fenris said, a rare smile dancing at the corner of his lips. "It isn't as exciting as crashing an orgy of magisters in the middle of a blood ritual, but... I suppose it will do."   
  
"Brilliant!" Hawke said. "I'll be here just after sundown."   
  
Luckily for Hawke, Fenris' mansion was even closer to the Chantry than his own. When he entered, some of the lay brothers and sisters were occupied extinguishing some of the lamps that lit the vast but rarely empty space.   
  
"Maker be with you, Serah," said the sister whose eyes he met. When he didn't see Sebastian himself, he settled for the next best thing, standing at the feet of the immense statue of Andraste.   
  
"Serah Hawke," said the Grand Cleric. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"   
  
"Your Grace," Hawke said respectfully. "Is Sebastian available?"   
  
"Why- no, in fact, he's been in seclusion for some time," she said, and then narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "You wouldn't happen to have any idea as to why, would you?"   
  
'Yes,' thought Hawke, 'it's probably because I walked in on him kissing another man. Who's a mage. And also pregnant.' But for once better judgment overruled his quick tongue. After all, if he could think of a lie that could divert suspicion and get the Grand Cleric on his side, he stood a better chance of being able to convince Sebastian to come back.   
  
"Actually," he said slowly. "I might. It has to do with the tragic matter surrounding his family." Elthina sighed, her wrinkles appearing just a shade more pronounced from grief.   
  
"I was afraid of that," she said. "Can you tell me what it is that troubles him so?"   
  
Hawke, who had grown up respecting the Brothers and Sisters of the Chantry, if not always the Templars, was caught between the options of lying to the Grand Cleric and the other, more unthinkable option of betraying Anders.   
  
"You see," he began diplomatically, to buy himself time to think of what he was going to say. "He recently found out that his older brother had a mistress who was able to escape the attention of the mercenaries. The poor girl has been in hiding all this time, but she sought out Sebastian because she's with child." Hawke paused and glanced at Elthina to gauge her reaction. "When she heard that there was a Vael who had survived, she wanted to make her case to prove her child's legitimacy."   
  
"Oh my," said Elthina. "The poor, brave girl. Perhaps it would ease Sebastian's mind if she sought sanctuary here."   
  
Shit.   
  
"Your Grace, with all due respect, she's... still very frightened. I was able to earn her trust because I was the one who stopped the mercenaries. But she's safe with me, I doubt that's what's troubling Sebastian."   
  
"Very well, and - my goodness, she must nearly be due by now." Hawke nodded solemnly, thinking about poor Anders waddling around his clinic.   
  
"I'm afraid I think that's what's vexing Sebastian," he said. "This babe is the only family he has left, after all."   
  
"I see," said Elthina. "That is understandable."   
  
"If you could just tell Sebastian that Mother says he should come see her in a couple of nights to help get ready for the baby..."   
  
"Of course. I can't promise he will come, but I will make sure he receives the message." The Grand Cleric turned, then paused and turned back with a warm, motherly smile. "Thank you, Serah Hawke. You know, I had worried when you announced that you had answered his message that your influence would cast a shadow of uncertainty over his life. But I have seen him gaining purpose, now, something to spur him on through this tragedy. You have been good for him. I am glad that he has found a friend in you." Hawke smiled.   
  
"Thank you, Your Grace," he said. She nodded.   
  
"And give your mother my best," she said. "I knew her when she was a babe in arms. Such a beautiful child. Such a good woman to take in this poor girl. Especially after what happened to your sister. Have you heard any news?"   
  
"A little," Hawke said, his smile fading a little at the reminder that his little sister was locked up in the Gallows. "Only enough to know that she's well. I joked in the last letter I got to her that I would have to work harder to give enough weight to our name that she would be allowed to write freely, for Mother's sake." Elthina shook her head, though there was a fondness to it.   
  
"Don't go looking for trouble," she warned him. "It's easy to find more than you seek." He put a hand to his chest in offense.   
  
"I've never gone looking for trouble in my life, Your Grace. Sometimes I think it comes looking for me."   
  
"I will pass your message on to Sebastian," she said. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Perhaps becoming an uncle will help him realize the path he's truly meant to take."   
  
"We can only hope," Hawke replied diplomatically. He waited around for a few minutes after she left, to see if Sebastian would appear (probably to yell at him for lying to the Grand Cleric, honestly), but as he waited he kept looking at the small library off to the side of the Chantry. The place where he had first seen Anders become Vengeance. How easily he could recall the spilled blood of the Templars, the brand of Tranquility on Karl's forehead and the grief and terror in his eyes when somehow Anders had broken through to the man trapped inside. Karl was someone's son, once. Someone's brother. If they'd succeeded in getting him out, he might even be a father any day now.   
  
Having witnessed Karl's fate, having seen the bond between him and Anders, Hawke completely understood why - if it were the case - Anders would want to lie about his child's other father. Hawke was more willing to believe that he had been able to meet with his lover under the Templars' noses than he was to believe that Anders' child had been fathered by the Maker. But the truth was Anders' to tell, whatever it was, not his to assume. And whether the child was truly divine or from a more earthly origin, Hawke couldn't just abandon Anders to raise the baby by himself. Not when Anders had already trusted him with so much.   
  
It made Hawke uncomfortable to think about how easily all the blood had been cleaned from the stone floor, to look around and see no trace of the dead men who had been strewn around the alcove. He wondered if Elthina had known anything about the trap, or if the Templars had been so confident that the bloodbath had been a surprise. He wanted to ask, to demand answers, but he didn't want to put Anders to any unnecessary risk in his already vulnerable condition (even with Justice's help, it was getting harder and harder for Anders' mana to regenerate, and the healer had already begun to rely on more mundane healing knowledge, saving his magic for the most desperate cases, because he didn't want to put his child at risk by quaffing a lyrium potion to replenish his mana).   
  
Eventually, it became apparent that Sebastian wasn't going to appear, and the bloody memories had effectively unsettled Hawke's peace of mind, so he slipped quietly back out of the Chantry. When he saw how low the sun was in the sky, he sighed. He'd taken so long with all of his other stops that the merchants would all be closed up for the day. Moreover, wandering through Lowtown by himself was a good way to get mugged, and his mother would definitely be cross with him if that happened.   
  
Once the thought of his mother crossed his mind, the decision was made for him. His feet turned automatically toward home. But his heart was already pounding at the thought of going to the Alienage first thing in the morning.   
  
The Alienage was rarely quiet in the morning, when everyone was just beginning their day and there were wares to sell, clothes to wash, and children to mind. Hawke, for all his tall, broad-shouldered, armor-clad humanity, earned himself a few wary glances from some of the elves as he came down the steps, but as soon as the hush had fallen it lifted again. But he had eyes only for one door, which he knocked gently on, before running his hands through his hair to try to tame his thick, black mane.   
  
"Oh! Goodness me!" Merrill exclaimed when she opened the door. "If I'd known you were coming by today, I would have tidied up a bit. Oh dear, everything is such a mess, I'm sorry, Hawke..."   
  
"It's fine, Merrill," Hawke said hastily. "I think your home is nice. Very...homey." Merrill's sharp cheekbones flushed with color.   
  
"Can I get you something to drink?" she asked. "I have, um, water... Oh, and I did find a very delicious tea."   
  
"No thank you, Merrill. I came to see if you wanted to help me with something."   
  
"Oh! Absolutely, Hawke, I'd love to." She beamed at him with that smile that made his knees weak. "Um... What is it?"   
  
"Right, um, yes. So I'm putting together a little party for Anders and the baby."   
  
"Really? Oh, that's terribly exciting! But, what do you need my help with?"   
  
"Well, I was hoping you'd come with me to pick out a gift for the baby. Since you probably have the most experience with babies and, um. I would really enjoy your company."   
  
"Oh, I'd love to, Hawke! That sounds lovely. Let me get my ball of twine."   
  
"Don't worry, I'll make sure you get home safe."   
  
"I know that, silly thing! But if I forget it this time then I'll forget it some time when I really do need it, and then I'll be in just a terrible mess. Wait here, it'll only take a second!"   
  
Hawke waited, looking around the entry to Merrill's cozy little house. He didn't like how far away it was from his own, how easily she could get lost if she needed to find him. He knew that Varric had eyes and ears and plenty of coin across the city looking out for her (as well as the rest of their friends), but the urge to do more than protect her, to provide for her swelled up and settled in his breast.   
  
She came happily bouncing back out, fastening a small pouch on her belt. She had also tucked her staff onto her back.   
  
"All ready," she said cheerfully.   
  
"Then let's go," Hawke said. He held the door for her and then waited while she locked it behind them.   
  
"Do you have any idea what you're thinking of getting?" Merrill asked.   
  
"Uh," Hawke said intelligently, caught off-guard by being asked a question when all he could think about was how nice it would be to hold her hand. "Not...really," he admitted, rubbing the back of his head. Merrill hummed thoughtfully.   
  
"And I suppose this is a surprise party, so we can't just ask Anders what he needs."   
  
"Right."   
  
"Well," she said. "Babies really only need to be warm, fed, and loved. Anders no doubt already loves her dearly, and I'm sure he's got some kind of plan to keep her fed, so let's see what we can find." The Lowtown market was already buzzing with activity, and Hawke swelled with pride at how Merrill unconsciously scooted closer to his side while she scanned the stalls with wide, beautiful green eyes.   
  
"Oh! Hawke, over here!" she exclaimed, grabbing his hand. His heart skipped a beat, fluttering wildly like a whole swarm of butterflies at the touch of her smaller, dainty hand in his big armored one. He only vaguely noticed that she was dragging him toward one of the tables, until she let go of his hand and he realized that they'd stopped at a table full of a rainbow of different fabrics. The woman behind the table had an ample length of cloth wrapped around herself to secure a bright-eyed, curious toddler to her back.   
  
"Looking for fabric?" she asked, addressing Hawke. "We carry everything from Antivan cotton to Orlesian silks." Somehow, Hawke doubted that, but before he could open his mouth to reply Merrill beat him to it.   
  
"Mm... No, silk won't do," Merrill said, running her hand along one fabric. "Although it is very pretty. We're looking for something that's a little more forgiving - what kind of fabric is your sling made of?" she asked. The woman looked at Merrill like she hadn't noticed the elf there before and wished she didn't have to acknowledge her now, a look that instantly made Hawke want to take their business elsewhere. Merrill, on the other hand, was undeterred.   
  
"You see, our friend is having a baby," she explained with the sweetest smile she could muster, "and something like that is just so useful. You can tie it a dozen different ways and it keeps the little one perfectly safe and out of trouble, doesn't it. Do you have something in a dark greeny-blue? Nothing too flashy, right, Hawke?"   
  
"Let me see what I can find," the woman said.   
  
"Thank you!" Merrill smiled and waved at the baby, who pulled its beslobbered, pudgy little fist from its mouth to wave back. "Goodness me, are all human babies that size?" she wondered aloud. "You're very handsome, aren't you?" she cooed. Hawke was immensely grateful for his beard, with how quickly he felt heat flush to his face at just the mental image of Merrill with a baby. It was silly, he knew she had handled babies before, that was exactly why he wanted her advice now. He blamed Anders for bringing the reality of a baby into their friend group. That was probably a safe bet.   
  
Just then, the woman turned back around with a folded bundle of bluish-green fabric that she laid out over the top of her other wares. The color was deeper than that of the patched short jacket that Anders wore, but the material was much softer and finer, almost fuzzy to the touch. Merrill ran a hand over it appraisingly, and let out a satisfied coo.   
  
"Oh, I think it's perfect," she said. "What do you think, Hawke?"   
  
"Absolutely," he said. The woman told them the price, and Hawke handed over the coin while Merrill happily gathered the rolled fabric into her arms.   
  
"And the lovely thing about it is, when the babe is too big to be carried anymore, the fabric can be sewn into all sorts of little clothes," she said cheerfully. "Of course, it won't be long before anything gets outgrown, either... But - maybe that's why little ones all get put into robes and dresses so often! You know, you can tuck up a little extra fabric at the seams and the clothes will last much longer."   
  
"So that's how Mother did it," Hawke mused. Not that half of the clothes that had been passed from him to Carver hadn't been more patch than shirt by the time he was through with them, but by the time that Carver outgrew them there was hardly anything left. The thought of Carver still stung, even almost two years later, and especially because now it made him think of Bethany, too, trapped by herself in the Gallows.   
  
Hawke looked around suddenly, realizing that while he'd been lost in his own thoughts Merrill had wandered off.   
  
"Merrill?" he called, hit with a swooping feeling like his legs had just been knocked out from under him. Before he could panic, he saw her standing at a stall of trinkets owned by a tired-looking elf.   
  
"Oh, I'm sorry, Hawke," she said, reaching out to touch his arm when he came up next to her. Relief washed over him so fast he wasn't completely sure she hadn't used magic. "I just... It's not important. I'm sure you have things you ought to be doing." Her other hand lingered next to a pretty silver cloak pin in the shape of a broad-limbed tree with little emerald leaves. "Sorry to keep you waiting."   
  
"How much for that pin?" Hawke asked the shop owner. Merrill gasped, pulling her hand away like the pin had just jumped up and bit her.   
  
"Hawke, no- it's just a silly thing..."   
  
"I want to get it for you, Merrill," Hawke said with a smile. Merrill blushed.   
  
"Two gold," the elf said, then squinted. "Are you the same Hawke who used to run with Athenril...?" he asked, keeping his voice low.   
  
"...Depends on whether it gets me a discount or an extra fee," Hawke said warily.   
  
"For this hypothetical Hawke," the elf said, "I could make the price one gold, twenty silver. If this Hawke promised not to tell Athenril he saw me."   
  
"Deal!" Hawke said cheerfully, holding out his hand to shake on it before going for his purse.   
  
"A pleasure doing business, Serah," the elf said, handing over the cloak pin as Hawke handed over the coin.   
  
"You too," Hawke said, then turned proudly to Merrill and presented the pin to her.   
  
"You really shouldn't have," she said softly. "I'll pay you back somehow-"   
  
"No, really, I'm happy to. Pay me back by wearing it," he said. She smiled, her sharp cheekbones still dusted with pink, as she took the delicate pin from the palm of his hand and pinned it to her robe. "It brings out your eyes," he said. She giggled.   
  
"Thank you, Hawke," she said, then hesitated briefly before reaching out and taking his hand. He looked at her tiny hand in his, then at the blush on her face, and blushed bright himself, dwarfing her hand with his big, armored one. Shopping done, they turned to head back toward the alienage, hand in hand.   
  
"Do you think I should make something for Anders and the baby?" Merrill asked. "I'm no artisan, but I could probably put something together..."   
  
"I think he'd appreciate whatever it is," Hawke reassured her.   
  
"Truly?" she asked. "It's just... I've gotten the impression that maybe he doesn't like me much..." Her voice had dropped to a whisper barely loud enough for him to hear, her gaze turned to the ground, and Hawke's heart sank. He hated the idea of any of his friends feeling excluded or not getting along, but out of all of them he was most protective of Anders and Merrill; the former who had already opened his heart to Hawke, who - as Bethany noticed as well - reminded Hawke of what his father might have been like as a younger man, and the latter who had left her clan and thus been abandoned by them, who was an outcast among her own people and who trusted Hawke explicitly. The idea of any kind of rivalry building between the two mages was heartbreaking to think about.   
  
"The two of you just have some magical differences," he said diplomatically. "For all that he hates them, he's still from a Circle, which from what I hear is a pretty hard mindset to break."   
  
"He seems happier now, you now. Than when we first met him? It is a little unusual, but I'm very happy for him. Babies are a lovely thing, I think he's going to be a very good father."   
  
"I think so too," Hawke said with a smile. They walked in silence for a few more minutes, as Hawke became progressively more aware of how long they'd been holding hands. After a while, Merrill began swinging their joined hands playfully back and forth.   
  
"Hawke," Merrill said, when they were at the top of the stairs that led down into the Alienage.   
  
"Yes?" he asked, maybe a little too quickly. She hesitated for a long moment, before blurting out:   
  
"Would you like to come in for tea?"   
  
He couldn't stop the grin that spread over his face. "I'd love to," he said.   
  
"Wonderful! I mean, it's always lovely to spend time with you, Hawke."   
  


* * *

"Enough," Cassandra snapped. "You're just trying to distract me."   
  
"Ah, but the fact that you noticed means that it worked." She snarled dangerously, advancing toward him, and he raised his hands in surrender.   
  
"Get back to the story, dwarf," she said.   
  
"You sure you don't wanna hear about the rest of the date?" Varric asked. "The way I heard it, it was almost sweet enough to rot your teeth out."   
  
"No," she growled.   
  
"Suit yourself," he said with a shrug. "So Hawke was planning this big to-do for Anders, but if there's one thing that Hawke is definitely not , it's subtle."


	10. And They Shall Endure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders has been broken for over twenty years, now. Hawke is just doing his best to help put him back together again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor warnings for this chapter include a lot of talk about the less pretty aspects of pregnancy and babies. If you want to skip it completely, jump down to the first line break.

Anders could tell that Hawke was planning something. For starters, when he showed up at the clinic that morning to help set up, the boisterous man was bursting with more energy than usual. But Anders had slept terribly the night before, between his seemingly omnipresent backache and the bone-deep throbbing pain of his hips slowly settling wider and wider apart. At this point he had had to replace his threadbare undershirt with a plain woman's smock (also pretty threadbare, and kindly donated by one of his patients who had had mercy on his discomfort) and he could barely fit into his robes, the only ring that he could fasten stretched nearly to its limit on top of the unyielding swell of his stomach. By the end of each day, his feet had swollen to the point where he feared he might have to cut his boots off to remove them, and sometimes between the effort of reaching around his huge stomach and his feet being stuck fast he gave up and laid down with his boots still on.

His only solace was that he only had to suffer a few more weeks of this indignity, before the baby was due.

For the last few weeks, Hawke had managed to convince Anders to remember to eat and take care of himself by starting up a large pot of hearty stew over the fire sometime around midday and sharing the nourishing meal among Anders' patients who were well enough to keep it down, a gesture which genuinely touched Anders, who was sure that for some of his patients this was the only meal they got to eat all day.

That day turned out to be a slow one in the clinic (if slow days weren't sometimes an occurrence before and in the earlier parts of his pregnancy,  Anders would have begun to be concerned that news of his condition was sowing seeds of doubt about his healing ability), but Hawke had begun preparing enough food to feed at least twice as many people as there currently was in the clinic.

"Is there something I don't know about?" Anders asked in amusement, on a rare occasion that he got to sit down for a few minutes. Hawke looked up almost guiltily.

"Why would you say that?" he asked, terrible liar that he was. It was endearing, like a cat staring up at you pretending like they didn't make the mess that you just watched them make.

"You're making enough to feed an army, it looks like," Anders pointed out. "Or a small troop of Grey Wardens." Hawke laughed at that.

"I always make more than enough," he said. "I guess it comes from having a bigger family."

"Mmhm," Anders said suspiciously, making it clear that he didn't buy it. But he didn't press it, choosing instead to stand up and stretch his arms over his head to try and crack his spine back into place. "Oof," he groaned, one hand resting on his stomach and the other cradling the small of his back.

"I don't know how you've managed, Anders," Hawke said. "I wouldn't be nearly as calm about this as you've been."

"If you were in my position, it would be the result of either very careful planning or a truly unfortunate curse," Anders said.

"Knowing my luck, probably the latter," Hawke said with a shake of his head. "So, um, any idea when the big day will be?"

"Well, according to what little writing I could find she's not going to be taking me by surprise," he said. "If I had to estimate, I would say mid to late Solace, but at this point she can come any time she likes and she'll be fine." Anders had to bite the inside of his cheek not to laugh at the terrified look on Hawke's face.

" _Any time?_ " he asked softly, like if he spoke too loudly she would decide to burst from his stomach then and there.

"Believe me, she'll give us plenty of advance warning," Anders said fondly. "When I go a few days without being able to keep down any food, then it'll really be 'any time.'" At just that moment, a man came in, practically carried to a cot by his two friends. Anders was thankful that he was already standing, leaving Hawke with a pat on the shoulder and hurrying to the cot to begin assessing the man's condition. He felt his forehead for fever and checked for other injury aside from the compound fracture sticking out of the man's shin. Once he was sure that the man's pallor was just from the shock of the injury, he focused on it immediately, closing his eyes and hovering his hands over the wound. He felt the warmth of his magic flow through him and out through his palms, a sense of calm coming over him as he turned himself into a bridge between the fade and the waking world, borrowing Justice's energy. He felt the bone through the magic, guided his magic to push it back together and line up the pieces, knitting bone and flesh both back together. The action was almost effortless, second nature by now, despite the swooning feeling it left him with for a moment after. Early in his pregnancy, that vacuum left behind when he closed the connection to the Fade had been enough to set off his nausea, but now he just leaned heavily on his staff and closed his eyes for a moment until he felt grounded in his skin again.

"Thank you, Healer," his patient said in awe, sitting up and examining the freshly-healed scar where the wound had been. Anders opened his eyes and straightened back up.

"Anytime," he said with a tired smile.

As it turned out, the man was just the beginning of a steady stream of patients, and Anders found himself quite occupied until the sun was starting to set and the smell of whatever Hawke was using the fire pit to prepare had permeated the air inside the clinic with a rich, meaty smell. Anders sighed, the last patient healed and no new ones coming in the door, taking a brief moment to lean back against the table he used for a desk, closing his eyes for just a moment and letting his chin tip down to his chest. Just for a moment.

He definitely dozed off for more than a moment. He didn't even have any room to deny it, because he was startled awake by Hawke shaking his shoulder gently.

"-ders. Anders?"

"Mmgh?" He scrubbed a hand down his face, lingering on the fine blond stubble on his chin that had become even more fine and patchy over the course of his pregnancy.

"Did you just fall asleep standing up?" Hawke asked, incredulity and laughter at war in his tone.

"No, 'm fine," Anders said, yawning. "Just resting my eyes for a second. Did someone come in?"

"Not for a few minutes. It's about time to put out the lanterns, I wanted to know if you wanted me to do it."

"Would you?" Anders asked. "My back is killing me. I think my body would just quit altogether and completely fall to pieces if I tried." Hawke laughed.

"Go get some stew," he said. "You were so busy earlier I couldn't tell you it was ready." Anders' stomach growled.

"Thank you, Hawke," he said.

"You're welcome," Hawke said. "Both of you. Don't fall asleep yet, I have a surprise for you. I'll be back in a minute." The warm fondness that filled Anders' chest was immediately cut with suspicion, and he narrowed his eyes at his friend. Hawke, undeterred, beamed at him.

"Trust me," he said.

Maker help him, but Anders did.

Before he allowed himself to sit down, Anders set about tidying the clinic while Hawke stepped out to extinguish the lanterns. He gathered up the linens that needed washing and contemplated how difficult it would be to magic them clean versus spending a good part of the rest of the night scrubbing the stains out. He piled them all in a basket and put the basket to the side to be dealt with later. He had barely lowered himself to the low stool next to the fire with a bowl of stew when the door creaked open.

"Good, you're sitting down," Hawke said brightly. "Alright, come in!" He called out behind him. Anders felt the sharp pull of his will trying to drag him to his feet and his exhausted body refusing to budge. His body won out, though his brow furrowed in worry.

The first woman who moved around Hawke was one Anders recognized immediately, a short, round woman in the classic shape of Ferelden peasant mothers, whose youngest son Anders had saved from chokedamp and whose eldest had been one of those desperate enough to work in the Bone Pit and unfortunate enough not to make it home. She wore a knowing smile and carried a sturdy wooden chest of some kind on her hip.

"Good evening, Ser," she said, setting her burden down on the floor and taking a seat next to him. It was only then that Anders realized Hawke had set up more makeshift seats around the fire. Next was a woman and her teenaged daughter, who was carrying the months-old baby girl that Anders had helped deliver through the mother's long, difficult labor, made more difficult by the previous loss of a child during the long and harried journey from Ferelden. When Anders started trying to get to his feet to check the babe for illness or injury, the baby's big sister hurried to claim the seat at Anders' other side.

"It's alright, Ser," she said, bouncing the baby on her knee. "She's the healthiest baby you'll ever see. See how much bigger she is than last time? A hearty Ferelden babe as ever I seen," the big sister said proudly. Anders smiled at the baby watching him with wide grey eyes.

"She eats like a Warden," the babe's mother agreed. "Finally started to wean her when she started drawing blood." The woman who'd sat down to Anders' right laughed.

"When my Anthony was still on the teat, he used to suck so hard he'd leave bruises. But Arnell was the biter, Maker rest his soul. I'd always wonder if he didn't think he was supposed to chew through them to get at the good stuff."

"Your Arnell and my oldest, Jaime, sound poured from the Maker's same mold," chimed in the next woman,  who held a bound package in her lap as she sat down next to the first.

It took an embarrassingly long moment for Anders to process, as the party of six women filed in and took seats, some with their children in tow and others alone, that they weren't there for medical treatment.

It wasn't quite until Hawke's hand clapped his shoulder that he realized they were there for  _him_.

"Before you scare him to death with horror stories of what he has to look forward to, let's all have something to eat, shall we?" Hawke said charmingly.

"Oh, the healer's seen worse than anything we've said so far," said a younger woman bouncing a toddler on her knee. "Isn't that right, Ser?"

"Do you know if you're going to be able to nurse?" asked another.

"I, ah..."

"It's best if they can nurse from  _someone_ ," said the first. Anders hazarded a glance at Hawke, who had taken a knee next to the pot in the middle of the circle to start serving soup into plain wooden bowls, and couldn't hold back a snicker when he saw the way the warrior's pale ears were burning bright red.

"There you are!" the girl next to him said sweetly. "The Healer is awake, after all."

"Sorry," he said, somehow finding his voice. "I'm just not...sure what all this is for."

"It's for you, Serah," commented the only Marcher present. "Serah Hawke put out word that your little one was coming soon, so  he got a few of us together to celebrate the happy occasion."

"Did he now?" Anders asked, fixing Hawke with a stare. The warrior shrugged meekly, holding out a bowl to the woman sitting next to Anders.

"Surprise?" he said with a sheepish grin.

"I think it was sweet of him," chimed in the big sister.

"Not too many men willing to listen to a bunch of women talk," her mother agreed.

"Especially not young men. I think the world would be a better place if there were more young fathers like you-"

"Haha, oh, no, I'm not the-" Hawke stammered, at the same moment that Anders said "Hawke isn't-"

"Really? I didn't mean to assume, Serah..."

"No, it's not an issue. The other father isn't...in the picture," Anders said, trying to put the matter to bed. The women, most of whom had lost their husbands, tutted sympathetically.

"Poor dear," one said.

"Well, you're lucky to have a friend like Serah Hawke, anyway," the woman from the Free Marches said. Anders looked up at the warrior as Hawke stood to leave the center of the circle and caught his sheepish gaze with a fond smile.

"I am," he agreed. Hawke's face lit up in a boyish grin.

"So then when are you due, now?" one woman asked.

"I think around mid-Solace," Anders said, setting his half-eaten bowl of stew on his thigh and rubbing one hand over his stomach.

"It certainly looks like it. And look at how high you're carrying - that baby will be a little girl, for sure." Anders smiled, smoothing out a hard kick from the baby.

"And a good thing, too, little boys are nothing but trouble," said the matron with six sons. "There's nothing in this world a man can do that a woman couldn't do just as well - Not that we're not grateful, Ser."

Anders thought about the severe older woman who acted as though she had been born white-haired and sixty years old, but who had always been gentle with him as she healed the wounds that the Templars had given him in detaining him after each of his ill-fated escapes. He had never been her protege, but she had taught him how to heal selflessly. He found out through Warden-Commander Tabris, when she learned that he was also from Ferelden's Circle, that Wynne had traveled with her and helped end the Fifth Blight. Wynne never would have made the foolish decisions he had, like taking a spirit into his body.

"No," he said. "I understand. Most of my healing I learned from a woman, after all." The women smiled and nodded.

"She taught you well, Serah. My Levi might have lost his leg if not for you."

"I only do what I can," Anders said. He swelled with a weak, fluttery sort of pride that he had done enough that these good women, who had all likely grown up hearing the Chant and all it had to say about magic and mages, not only trusted him but cared about him. Cared about  _him_ , not just for what he could do with his hands or a staff. If he wasn't careful, he could get overwhelmed just thinking about it for too long. He caught Hawke grinning proudly once or twice out of the corner of his eye, the warrior happily serving seconds and clearing empty bowls. If Hawke wasn't interjecting occasionally and being his usual charming self, Anders would have been suspicious that his friend had something else planned. But when the fire had started to die down and Anders and the guests had all eaten their fill, Anders watched Hawke effortlessly lift the pot from the embers ("Excuse me, ladies, hot metal coming through,") and begin portioning out the remainder for each woman to take plenty home to feed all their hungry mouths.

"My goodness, Ser Hawke is strong," one woman remarked.

"He sure is," said the teenage girl sitting next to Anders (who had passed her baby sister off to their mother), with a moon-eyed sigh.

"And too old for you, young lady," her mother said sharply, with an amused shine in her eye. "That is one bad thing about little girls, Healer, is you have to keep an eye on  _big_ girls where pretty young men are concerned."

"Amen," said the young woman with the toddler. "Wish someone had kept an eye on me, or I wouldn't have had Tynan."

"I'll keep that in mind," Anders said, suddenly and acutely aware of the fact that he used to  _be_ one of those aforementioned tempting pretty young men.

"Now, I think most of us didn't just come to scare you off parenting," said Miriam, the woman who'd lost the eldest of her six sons to the Bone Pit and the only one with more than ten years of age on Anders. "We also brought some things to make having a little one easier on you."

"It's not much," said Ryanne, the young mother with the toddler.

"But all of us here owe you more than we could ever repay, Serah," added the only Marcher, Aimee. Anders had a hard time finding breath around the lump stuck in his throat.

"Oh no! Don't cry, Ser!" Leighann, the teen on his left, cried out, pulling out her handkerchief and pressing it into his hand. His fingers clenched around it, and he held it to his mouth.

"You don't- You didn't have to-" by some miracle, he hadn't started crying yet, but his voice betrayed how close he was.

"We want to. We want to do something for you, for all you've done for us," said Berenice, Leighann's mother. "Because of you, I was healthy enough to be able to find work as a seamstress." Anders numbly took the bundle of fabric that Leighann passed over to him from her mother. He untied the twine and unfolded three little linen smocks, one cream, one heather grey, and one almost black.

"They're gathered so you can let them out and down as she grows. And if you do have a boy, they should last him through his first pair of trousers."

"Andie's wearing one right now," Leighann said. Anders noticed that the baby now sleeping with her head on her mother's shoulder was wearing a lace-edged chemise with dark red thread against the grey. He imagined wrestling little arms through the sleeves of the little chemises in his hands, unhooking fabric from soft little ears.

He'd had no choice but to accept that he was  _pregnant_ , but for some reason it wasn't until he was holding tiny clothes that he realized that he was going to have a  _baby_.

Miriam scooted her stool a little closer to his and put a firm, motherly hand on his back, rubbing in slow, even circles that helped remind him how to breathe. She had the chest that she'd carried in sitting in her lap. He made a soft, wet noise, almost a whimper. When had the last time been that he'd felt a motherly touch?

"Oh, you poor thing," Miriam tutted softly. Anders let her pull him into a hug.

And right then, he understood, as he cried on the shoulder of the strong matron who had begged him once to save her son. With the warm, motherly presences gathered around him. He  _felt_ safe and loved, and the feeling was so new that he was completely overwhelmed. It felt like a dam inside him had cracked and leaked messily, like something hard and unnatural had crumbled down, like his body was purging itself of some kind of poison.

_This_ was what he was fighting for. In all the abstract words of his manifesto, pages and pages of bold words screaming for the rights of mages, this moment here was more of a thesis than any sentence he'd put to paper, and he hadn't known it until he'd felt it for himself. The right for every man, woman, and child to feel this loved, regardless of whether they had magic. This was the one thing he could do for his child that he himself never had. Whatever her destiny, he would make sure that she never faced it alone.

He drew a long, shuddering breath, sobered up quickly at an armored hand on his back before he realized that it was Hawke's spiky gauntleted hand. He pulled back with a loud sniffle, wiping the tear tracks from his cheeks with Leighann's handkerchief that was still clutched in his hand.

"Sorry," he said wetly. "Sorry."

"Are you alright?" Hawke asked.

"He's alright," Miriam answered for him. Anders nodded, not trusting himself to speak without crying again. He relaxed when Hawke's hands came to rest on his shoulders, strong fingers kneading gently at the tense muscles there. Miriam looked at the wet tear-stain on the shoulder of her dress, then smiled fondly.

"When my boys and I fled Ferelden, we had to take only what we could carry with us. I packed as much as I could into this cradle here so we wouldn't have to leave it behind. My poor Peter, Maker guide him, made it for our oldest before he was born." Anders scrubbed at his eyes to keep the unshed tears from falling. Miriam smiled at him, took his hand to put it on the wood. "This crib has taken care of plenty of babies. I think it'll do nicely taking care of yours. It's high time it's had a little girl to sleep in it," she said gently.

"I can't accept this," he said meekly.

"You can," she said adamantly. "That babe needs a place to sleep, and I'm not having any more kids to fill the cradle myself." Anders let out a weak laugh.

"I can't hold it," he said, almost hysterically. Miriam laughed sympathetically.

"That's alright, love," she said. "Shh, shh, I know you don't have the lap to hold it right now." There were a bunch of giggles. Anders felt his ears flush.

"I don't normally..."

"It's alright," Hawke said. "I think you've got every excuse not to be at your best right now." Miriam shifted closer so she could put her arm around Anders to brace him, gently taking the chemises and putting them in the cradle for the moment.

"My gift is nothing much," Ryanne said shyly. "But my brother-in-law owned a farm, so when we fled we took plenty of wool with us, and..." She held out a thick, warm ram's pelt. "I know Solace is too warm for it, but these fleece have kept us warm for years, and your baby will love going to sleep all wrapped up in something this soft and warm." A soft smile curled onto his face as he reached out with almost trembling hands, burying his fingers in the thick fleece.

"Thank you," he choked softly.

"We aren't done yet," Aimee sing-songed lightly. Anders barked out a wet, disbelieving laugh, burying his splotchy face in the fleece in his hands for a minute to compose himself. It smelled so uniquely Fereldan that it made him homesick for a farm he hadn't seen since he was twelve years old.

The next gift was a few thick cotton burp and bum cloths ("one in the wash, one on your arm, and one on the babe," was the wisdom that came with it). After that was a soft grey swaddling cloth, and then last but not least a coarse canvas teething ring filled with sand and a wooden toy chain that doubled as a teething toy. The women talked over Anders some more, giving him the opportunity to compose himself enough to thank them without crying (no one had really given him a  _gift_ since Warden-Commander Tabris, and here these women had banded together to give with everything they had).

"I don't know where to begin," he said quietly. "Thank you all, I can't... I can't believe it. You've given me so much..."

"You gave us the most important gift. You gave us hope, you saved our lives, our children's lives. Nothing we have could repay you for that," Miriam said, so softly and honestly that Anders' carefully-crafted composure nearly flew right back out the window.

"I only do the best I can," he said.

"But nobody asked you to give your best to us down here," Aimee argued. "And you do it without asking a single copper. The least we can do is show you how much we appreciate all you do for us."

"I... Then, thank you," he said again, at a loss for any other words. "Truly. Thank you."

"It's our pleasure, Ser."

* * *

The first women to leave were the ones who hadn't brought their children with them, followed by Ryanne with her sleeping toddler. Leighann's sister woke up and demanded to be held by the older girl, who immediately introduced her to the healer who delivered her.

"You haven't seen her since her Name Day, have you?" she asked. Anders shook his head.

"What did you say her name was?" he asked.

"Andie," Leighann said proudly. "After the healer who saved her and Mama's lives." Anders smiled softly.

"Hello then, Andie," he said. The baby smiled shyly and hid in her sister's shoulder. Anders waved when a single grey eye peeked out at him, and she lifted a pudgy little hand and waved back, then hid her face again with a sleepy noise.

"We ought to be heading home," the girls' mother said, putting a hand on her older daughter's shoulder. This time, Anders struggled to his feet and was pulled into a hug. After a moment he closed his eyes and hugged her back, as much as he could with the hard swell of his stomach pushing them apart. Her hand rubbed his back in soft, motherly circles.

"Thank you," he said again.

"Thank  _you_ , Healer," she said. When she pulled back, she touched his cheek briefly before she turned to go.

"If you want to practice with a baby, you can borrow Andie anytime you like," Leighann joked.

"I think I'll have my hands full with my own soon enough," Anders said lightly. He walked them to the door of the clinic and bid them good night again, and then closed his eyes and leaned against the door.

"Did you have fun?" Hawke asked hopefully. If Hawke had asked Anders if he would have had fun at a party for him with some of his past patients, he would have said no and put some kind of a mild "feeling like you have a rock in your shoe" curse on Hawke (or possibly just an actual rock in his shoe) for suggesting it. Right now he felt completely wrecked, like a horse that had been ridden hard and put away wet. But he felt lighter, too, like something that was healed wrong had re-broken so it could be set right.

"I feel like a fever rag that's been wrung dry," Anders said, putting a hand to his flushed forehead. "But yes, Hawke, I did enjoy myself. Thank you." The warrior beamed brightly.

"Good, because I have another surprise for you." Just like that the peace disappeared and Anders' eyes snapped open again.

"Oh, Maker, what now?"

"No, I promise you'll like it. And you probably won't cry. I hope."

"That's not encouraging, but I'll bite. Where is it?"

"Follow me." Anders followed Hawke to a ladder tucked away just outside the clinic, which he eyed with distrust. Hawke looked at him expectantly, to which he motioned at his stomach and then at the ladder, which was admittedly tilted so as not to seem completely insurmountable.

"I won't let you fall, I promise," Hawke said. "It's just to that door there." Warily, Anders mounted the ladder and started climbing, looking back over his shoulder to make sure that Hawke was still there. The cellar that the trap door led to was well-lit and well-stocked, and Hawke nudged Anders on up the stairs toward what must be the main part of the house. The indistinct noise grew louder until it cut off with a "shh!" that made Anders freeze in place and turn to look at Hawke. If he'd been exhausted before, he was on high alert now. Every part of this felt like a trap, his instincts screaming at him to run, to fight, to do something. Hawke stepped around Anders at the top of the stairs and opened the door in front of him.

"Surprise!" Chimed a friendly chorus of voices, including Hawke's to his left. Anders felt the silvery-blue light race across his skin before it shone through in waves like lightning, the roar of adrenaline deafening as it crashed through him, leaving him grasping for a staff that Hawke had wisely made him leave behind. He didn't hear Merrill gasp, barely noticed the mabari growl defensively or the way everyone stepped back from him, his glowing blue eyes seeking out the corners, safety, looking around for a flash of templar full plate.

"Whoa, alright, maybe not the best idea..." Varric said. "Blondie? You okay?" The dwarf's friendly, familiar face and voice brought Anders back down slowly, like climbing down from a ladder when you're afraid of heights, and he relaxed by fractions, the cracks of the Fade shimmering and disappearing from his skin as the blue Fade-light receded from his eyes. Looking around, he realized who was there. Merrill stood at the front with Hawke's loyal mabari, with Varric next to her on one side and Hawke's mother behind her. He raised a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath to steady himself on his feet.

"Sorry, it's been a long night," he said.

"Then let's get you a chair," Hawke's mother said. "You poor thing, your feet must be killing you. If I had known my son would bring you up through the cellar..."

"Mother-"

"I know, it's the fastest way, but I remember what it was like being so far gone, and if your father had suggested I climb a ladder in that state I would have knocked his head off his shoulders."

"Maker's balls, Blondie, you look like you're going to pass out," Varric said, stepping up to Anders' side and putting a hand on his back, trying to hide his concern behind a thin joke.

"Come on, Anders," Merrill said sweetly, not hiding her concern at all. "Are you thirsty? You look like you could use some water."

"Thank you," Anders said, carefully taking the chair that Varric led him to and feeling every nerve in his body cry out to be avenged. He let out a long, pained groan of satisfaction at the weight suddenly being off his feet, his head tilting back as he melted into the chair. Hawke's mother chuckled knowingly.

"You're not taking those stairs again tonight, young man," she said. "It's a good thing I had the guest room made up just in case."

"Thank you," Anders said. He felt like he'd said those two words more over the last few hours than the last five years, but the bone-deep gratitude at not having to crawl back to Darktown was genuine. Merrill came back and held out a glass of water. Frost spread from her fingers to the glass, and he took the cold drink from her hands and sipped it gratefully. He drained it quickly, exhausted and dehydrated from his earlier tears. 

"Now," Hawke said, barely hiding the beam of excitement. "Now that you're settled in. There's not as many people here as I was hoping, honestly, but you've still got some presents to open before you can run off to bed." Anders spared a moment to give Hawke a look that plainly told him how high the chances were of him "running" anywhere.

"Andraste's  _knickers_ , Hawke. You're spoiling her before she's even born." He felt a none-too-gentle kick in the ribs. "Yes, you," he grumbled,  rubbing sorely at the spot with a flash of healing magic on his fingertips. Hawke laughed.

"Too late," he said. "Kennel's been opened, mabaris are loose, etcetera."

"Especially one black-haired mabari we all know," Varric quipped in an aside to Anders that made him smirk, stifling a laugh behind his fist.

" _Varric,_ " Hawke said, with no venom in it.

"He said, in an admiring and jealous tone that his best friend and not he had gotten Blondie to crack a smile." Anders' shoulders tensed with the effort it took not to laugh.

"Why are you like this?" Hawke asked with an eye roll.

"You love me," Varric parried back.

"Maker only knows why," Hawke said, walking over to his writing desk. It was only then that Anders noticed the small pile of presents with varying degrees of wrapping stacked on top of it.

"Let's start with the ones who couldn't make it," Merrill suggested, skipping to Hawke's side and picking up a little package tied up in a blue handkerchief with gold bangles. No points for guessing who that belonged to. "Here, this one is from Isabela," she said, cheerfully depositing the package in Anders' hands.

"This oughta be good," Varric said, and Anders glanced over to meet his fond exasperation with a twinkle of amusement. Anders looked back down and untied the knot on top of the parcel, pulling out the small wooden box and opening it carefully. Inside were two tiny gold hoop earrings, and one larger one, along with a folded note.

_When she's older, Auntie Bela will make her look adorable. Plus one for you too, sweet thing, if you ever want me to re-pierce that ear for you._

Anders flushed bright red and touched the abandoned piercing in his ear, the last bit of gold he'd had to sell to buy passage to Kirkwall. It had been almost a year, but he'd had the piercing for closer to ten before that, he may be able to fit the ring in it still. He shook his head and started to wrap the box back up.

"Well, what is it?" Merrill asked.

"Something for the baby to wear when she's a little older," Anders said. "Earrings."

"Oohh. That  _is_ a very Isabela gift."

"Alright," Hawke said. "Which one do you want next, Aveline or Fenris?" Anders practically felt his train of thought come screeching to a halt.

" _Fenris?_ " he repeated in disbelief.

"Fenris it is, then!" Hawke said. "He dropped this off with Mother while I was out, so I have no idea what it is."

"Wait," Anders said, even as his hands automatically took the offered parcel. " _Fenris_ sent this? He  _does_ know it's for me, right?"

"Well, yes. But you know, whether or not the two of you get along he has nothing against the baby."

"Yet," Anders said, crinkling the paper around the soft gift. He carefully unwrapped it, surprised when a small plush lamb fell out. The lamb stared back at him with a blank expression and a tiny stitched frown. Anders felt something flip-flop in his chest at the simple, understated gift.

"Oh, my goodness," Merrill cooed. "Well, isn't that just dear? The baby will love it."

Anders was still caught up on the fact that Fenris had sent a gift. One with thought and care behind it. Nothing about it was threatening, it wasn't anything like a muzzle or baby-sized handcuffs or anything that reflected Fenris' views on mages. It was just...a gift for a baby. He squished it a little to make sure no knives were hidden inside it, but it was just a cuddly toy.

"Huh." Maybe he'd underestimated the elf. When he looked up from the lamb, Hawke had the next package already held out in front of him.

"And this one is from Aveline," Hawke said.

"She stopped by earlier and tried to stay, but you guys were still at the clinic," Varric explained. Anders had a good guess what the gift was just from the wrapping, but he was surprised when the book he unwrapped was an illustrated storybook for children. It scared him how easily he could imagine holding a rosy-cheeked little girl on his lap, stuffed lamb clutched tight in her arms, hanging on his every word and following the pictures with utmost concentration.

"Anders, are you alright?" Hawke's mother's voice cut through the vivid fantasy, and he realized that tears had started rolling down his face. He scrubbed his eyes on his sleeve and managed a wet laugh.

"Hawke, I thought you said I wouldn't end up crying," he said, his voice too thick for real venom in the accusation. Hawke knelt down next to his chair, gently took the book and the lamb from the dwindling space on Anders' lap. Anders' empty hands shook, and he gave Hawke what he hoped was as distressed and pleading a look as he currently felt. Hawke let Anders hold onto one of his hands,  and Anders clung to it like a lifeline. He closed his eyes to try and master himself, but all he saw was bright eyes the same gold as his own, all he could think about was all that he knew about babies born to mages, babies taken away and given to the Chantry until they showed magic or they grew up. His chest tightened around the memory of the one birth he'd attended in the Circle, when Wynne had handed him the baby while she took care of the mother, and a Templar had yanked the baby boy out of his arms, still wet and wailing, and just...taken it away.

"You know, Daisy, it's getting late." Varric's coarse voice cut through Anders' dangerous thoughts, scattering them like shards of glass. He sucked in a shaky breath.

"It is?" Merrill asked. Then, "It's a pity it couldn't have been longer." Anders felt more than heard or saw the elf step away from his chair. "Hawke, you'd better help Anders straight to bed-the poor dear looks exhausted."

"Hawke can handle it from here," Varric said. "Come on, Bianca and I will walk you home." The dwarf and the elf left the room, the door clicking silently closed behind them. Anders' ragged breathing was the only thing that filled the room.

"Sweetheart, I think I'm going to bed, too," he heard Hawke's mother say.

"Goodnight, Mother," Hawke murmured distractedly.

"Goodnight, Garrett." Anders jumped at a small, motherly hand on his cheek, looked up at Hawke's mother with wide eyes. She smiled kindly at him. "Goodnight to you too, dear. Don't let this son of mine keep you up much later." Words failed him, until he could only nod his reply. Her hand slid from his cheek, and she climbed the stairs and disappeared into her room.

And just like that, it was him and Hawke alone.

"Hawke, what am I going to do?" Anders whispered. "The Circle, the Wardens... It was easy to say that I'd die before I went back to either one, but now... How am I supposed to protect her? From my enemies and hers?"

"You won't be alone," Hawke promised. Anders let out a bitter laugh.

"That was what I thought when I joined the Wardens," he said. "I thought, 'now here's a place I can be safe from Templars and get to do real good for people.'" He looked down at his lap, let go of Hawke's hand to pick at a fraying thread on his coat. "But then Warden-Commander Tabris left, and Oghren went back to his wife, and Velanna went looking for her sister, and Nathaniel..." he sucked in a breath, closing his eyes. "Sigrun stayed the longest, but she left too eventually. And it was just me and Justice, and then it seemed like the minute nobody left would tattle to the Warden-Commander suddenly, miraculously, a couple of Templars came to 'volunteer' their lives to the Wardens." Anders felt bile rise, bitter and acid, in the back of his throat. Hawke took his hand again and gripped it tight, but Anders didn't open his eyes. Maybe if he had offered to join with Justice long before the Templars came... Maybe he wouldn't have hurt his friend. He felt Justice protest - and the spirit had felt so much more like the Justice he'd met in Amaranthine, like he hadn't since they'd joined, that he could almost fool himself into thinking that being trapped with Anders, with his frustration and anger, wasn't hurting him.

If Hawke left the way the Warden-Commander had, how long until somebody alerted the Templars?

"Anders, no one is going to turn you in like that," Hawke said. "I promise-"

"Stop," Anders begged, cutting Hawke off and gripping his hand. "You can't promise that, you don't know-"

"I do," came a new voice from behind Anders' chair, and he had the sharp, hysterical thought that this was it, he was done, stupid Anders flying right into a trap too blind and hopeful to see it. But there was no echoing full plate, no agonizing Silence gripping his throat. There was only one set of footsteps crossing the room, hushed and cautious.

"Anders..." His traitorous stomach flipped with excitement (or possibly just the baby girl within chiming in with her reaction) at the sound of the gentle Starkhaven brogue. The blue eyes he looked into when he dared look up at the source of the voice were so young and so bright and so  _fervent_ , they drew him in as surely as a moth to a candle. Sebastian knelt to one knee on the floor between Anders' legs, and Anders reached out to cup his cheek with his hand. For a brief moment his heart ached as he imagined his little girl not with his own golden eyes but with Sebastian's clear, crystal blue. Sebastian smiled when Anders' thumb rubbed across his sharp cheekbone, his brown skin warm as he leaned into the touch.

Anders pulled his hand back and struck Sebastian across the face before his mind caught up with his body's reaction. The strike was barely enough to sting Anders' fingers, but it rung out in the empty hall like a thunderclap. Hawke looked between the two of them like a startled cat.

"All right," Sebastian said slowly, breaking the pregnant silence that hung in the air. "Maybe that one was fair."

" _Weeks_ , Sebastian!" Anders cried. "I haven't seen you in over a month!"

"More than fair, then."

"How can you come in and make promises to me when you haven't even been able to face me." He didn't mean it as a question.

"You're right," Sebastian said. "You have no reason to believe me. But I swear to you, you can trust that I will do what is in her best interest; and that means keeping her with her father."

"And what happens when I step out of line? When you no longer think that it's her best interest to stay with me?"

"I won't-"

"I'm an  _abomination._  You know that, you've seen it."

"You are still a man, not a monster. I give my word to you now, if you ever lose yourself and become a threat, then I will strike you down with my own arrow before you can do any harm you would regret, and I will raise your child with love." Anders regarded him, took in the earnestness of his features. Truth be told, it was a relief to him. He had to have been chosen to carry this child for a  _reason_ , but... There was still a part of him that wanted to trust Sebastian. Wanted to believe as strongly as Sebastian did in the future of the life he was carrying.

"And if she's a mage-"

"Even if she is a mage," Sebastian swore.

"See," said Hawke, "romance isn't dead after all." Anders shot Hawke a glare, but when he looked back down to Sebastian he saw the archer still looking at him, his gaze as piercing and true as his aim, far from the fumbling, awkward boy who had run away after kissing him.

"If you're serious about this, you have to prove it," Anders said.

"Aye, I'm ready."

"Come back to helping me at the clinic. Show me that you can support a cause because it is right, not because the Chantry tells you to."

"I will," Sebastian said. "And I'll do better than that, I'll stay through the night with you, if it pleases." Anders barked a laugh, hard and sharp.

"Maker, Sebastian, I'm swollen to the size of a sea monster. I'm beginning to think you have some kind of deviance."

"No! Nothing like that- I have, I mean, it's not that you're undesirable, but- I-" It was almost worth it just to watch the blush creep up Sebastian's face as he squirmed. "I have vows!" he blurted finally.

"Vows or no, I think there's been some unchaste thoughts," Hawke quipped. Anders stretched as far back as the chair would let him.

"I take my vows very seriously," Sebastian said, not rising to the bait. Anders' fond smile faded.

"However," Sebastian offered hesitantly, having noticed the storm clouds roll over Anders' expression, "because  _someone_ told the Grand Cleric that this child was my brother's illegitimate heir, I suspect I will have plenty of time to prove myself to you." Anders shot Hawke a downright wilting look.

"Someone did  _what?_ " Hawke looked nervously away from Anders.

"I...may have," Hawke said.

"Is that what it comes to?" Anders asked, feeling betrayal like a boot to his ribs, stealing his breath with an almost physical pain. "Is that what tonight was? Were you trying to soften the blow, working up the nerve to tell me that you were _conspiring_ to take away my child?" His tone was quiet and venomous, though he was sure the impact was lessened by the way he had to struggle against his own weight to stand. Sebastian scrambled to stand and get out of his way, but Anders was so incandescently livid that neither he nor Hawke dared reach out to steady him.

"I've had enough," Anders said flatly. "I'm going to bed - on your mother's hospitality, Hawke, unless you withdraw it."

"Of course not, I'll help you-"

"Just point the way." Hawke did. Anders didn't dare look at the man too long lest guilt creep in unbidden along the edges of his fury at the wounded look on the warrior's face. His anger carried him to the spare room, but once he slammed the door behind him he sagged heavily down onto the mattress like a puppet with its strings cut. He could hear Hawke and Sebastian arguing in hushed tones; affection-starved as he was, he had become so attuned to these men who had shown him what he took to be kindness that he was sure he would be able to pick their voices out of the busiest Lowtown market, let alone a quiet mansion.

"No more distractions," he vowed. He felt a hum from Justice, though whether it was from approval or otherwise he couldn't tell. It didn't matter. He was done giving his heart over to the mercy of others. If he had to flee Kirkwall to do it, he would.

He had lost too many things in his life, he would not let his child be taken from him too.


End file.
